Tunisian presidential decree: penal reconciliation between state, businessmen implicated in financial corruption
Tunisian state television said that the Council of Ministers approved 3 decrees, including a decree on penal reconciliation between the state and businessmen involved in financial corruption cases in exchange for development projects.
Tunisian President Kais Saied announced – in a speech during a cabinet meeting on the occasion of the independence anniversary – the issuance of a presidential decree related to the recovery of the looted funds, from whom he called “convicts of looting the Tunisian people’s money.”
Said said he wanted to make what he described as a new republic based on freedom and justice, adding that Tunisia has all the capabilities and capabilities to build the future.
He added, “We chose this day to consider a distinguished project, and I wanted it to be the day of Independence Day, to put draft decrees related first to a draft decree related to fiscal reform, so that the people recover their money that was looted from them instead of the cases published before the courts, and our great people recovered only a little.”
Saeed added in his speech that penal conciliation is a well-known procedure in the law.
Instead of putting the convicted defendant in prison, the convict pays the money he illegally used.
He explained that the recovered money “will be given to the poor,” indicating that procedures have been put in place and several precautions have been taken so that these funds go to their true owners.
Said announced a second decree related to the creation of a new type of company, the private companies “so that the Tunisian people can launch projects in every delegation (region) and so that young people become a source of wealth.”
As for the third decree, it is related to combating illegal speculation, “so that whoever wants to starve the people assumes his full responsibilities before the people and the judiciary.”
On July 28, Saeed stated that the value of the money looted from the country is estimated at 13.5 billion dinars (about 5 billion dollars), and that it must be returned in exchange for a penal settlement with the businessmen involved in its looting.
He explained – at the time – that “the number of people who looted the country’s money is 460, according to a report issued by the National Commission for Inquiry on Bribery and Corruption.”
These decrees come in light of a political crisis that Tunisia has been experiencing since July 25, 2021, when Said began imposing exceptional measures, including: freezing the powers of Parliament, issuing legislation with presidential decrees, dismissing the government and appointing new ones.
The majority of political and civil forces in Tunisia reject these measures, and consider them a “coup against the constitution”, while other forces support them and see them as a correction of the course of the 2011 revolution that toppled the late President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
