ALGIERS — An
Algerian appeals court on
Tuesday confirmed an 18-year prison sentence for Rafik Khalifa, who embezzled
from his own bank to finance a lavish lifestyle, the official APS news agency
said.
اضافة اعلان
Khalifa, 55, had received the same sentence in a
November 2020 court ruling involving one of the North African country’s largest
financial scandals.
Khalifa, who had a French villa and a private jet,
built and lost his empire while still in his 30s.
The criminal court in Blida, southwest of the
capital Algiers, also fined Khalifa 1 million dinars ($6,873), with
confiscation of his seized assets for offences including conspiracy, fraud and
falsification of bank documents, APS said.
Khalifa, who appeared by video from prison, was
acquitted of influence peddling.
After inheriting his father’s small pharmacy in a
suburb of
Algiers, Khalifa founded in the late 1990s a bank that bore his own
name, beginning the creation of a conglomerate that included an airline and a
television channel in France.
It all came crashing down in 2003 when the group
built around the bank, founded in the 1990s, went bust with losses estimated up
to around $5 billion.
It had employed 20,000 people in Algeria and Europe.
When his empire collapsed, Khalifa fled to
London to
avoid arrest but was extradited at the end of 2013.
In 2007 an Algerian court convicted him in absentia
to a life sentence. He was then retried in Algeria and given an 18-year jail
term in 2015.
A further retrial in 2020 issued the same sentence,
which was upheld Tuesday.
A French court in 2014 convicted Khalifa in absentia
and sentenced him to five years for misappropriating millions of euros.
Of 15 accused in the same case, the court on Tuesday
acquitted eight, including Abdelwahab Keramane, a former central bank governor,
his brother Abdenour, an ex-industry minister, and daughter Yasmine.
The others were each jailed for between two and
eight years.
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