Morocco’s Corruption Pandemic Exposed: A Crumbling Throne Beneath King Mohamed VI

Morocco’s Corruption Pandemic Exposed: A Crumbling Throne Beneath King Mohamed VI

 

✍️ BY: Dr. Hana Saada

Algiers, Algeria | In what increasingly resembles a decaying regime clinging to its last shreds of legitimacy, the Moroccan Makhzen is now engulfed in a deluge of corruption scandals that reach the very heart of the monarchy’s power structure. The myth of a modernizing Morocco is unraveling, replaced by a sordid reality of endemic graft, judicial complacency, and systemic theft of public wealth — a reality so glaring that even King Mohamed VI himself was forced to admit, in an unprecedented moment of royal candor, the rot eating away at the foundations of his regime.

 

Nowhere is this moral collapse more visible than in the once-glorious city of Marrakech, now the epicenter of a sprawling corruption scandal that implicates elected officials, high-ranking bureaucrats, real estate mafias, and a complicit silence from Morocco’s so-called “watchdog” institutions. According to a scathing report by the Menara section of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH), the city’s public administration has become a breeding ground for embezzlement, favoritism, and impunity.

Corruption as Governance: The New Normal of the Makhzen

The AMDH’s detailed communiqué reads like a legal indictment of an entire system. Public lands have been illicitly reclassified and transferred to private interests. Tax exemptions have been granted to cronies of the regime. Civil servants resisting illegal orders have been silenced or punished. In one particularly grotesque case, a female government minister is accused of orchestrating changes to land zoning regulations for personal gain — a flagrant abuse of power emblematic of the broader institutional decay.

State-run housing projects such as “El Ghali,” managed by the public company Al Omrane, are riddled with financial inconsistencies. A property worth 31 million dirhams allegedly fetched only 3 million, with no explanation offered for the missing millions. The AMDH denounces this as part of a larger scheme of clientelism and negligence, leaving hundreds of intended beneficiaries defrauded and helpless.

Even public infrastructure isn’t spared: the new El Azzouzia bus terminal, built at the taxpayer’s expense for a staggering 120 million dirhams, remains closed two years after completion — a grotesque symbol of dysfunction, squander, and suspicion.

Rot from the Top: The Royal Regime’s Complicity

The Moroccan Interior Ministry has attempted to project an image of accountability by announcing the suspension of a Caïd in Marrakech, accused of corruption. But this token gesture does little to mask the depth of the rot. It is a bandage on a gangrenous wound. As AMDH rightly points out, these are not isolated cases — they are systemic manifestations of a regime whose very survival depends on client networks, opacity, and the strangling of dissent.

What is unfolding in Morocco is not a string of unfortunate incidents. It is a pattern — a regime whose pillars are built not on justice or governance, but on selective enforcement, repression, and the protection of the corrupt. The Moroccan Penal Code, along with international anti-corruption conventions to which the kingdom is a signatory, has become a dead letter in the face of such pervasive criminality.

A Kingdom Under Siege — Not by Enemies, But by Itself

As the country drowns in scandals, Mohamed VI remains entangled in murky political alliances with apartheid Israel — alliances that only deepen the moral bankruptcy of his rule. While Palestinian women and children are being slaughtered, the Moroccan regime shakes hands with their tormentors. The king’s silence is as deafening as it is damning.

The reality is stark: the Makhzen is not reforming — it is rotting. The time for illusions is over. Morocco is not a beacon of stability; it is a kingdom teetering on the edge, its image abroad propped up by PR campaigns, while its people suffer the consequences of a corrupt and authoritarian elite.

The AMDH has issued a call for criminal prosecutions and systemic reform, but their voice echoes in a political desert. Until the Moroccan people reclaim their sovereignty and demand real accountability, the throne of Mohamed VI will remain a gilded facade atop a decaying state — a state that no longer governs, but merely plunders.

Shame is no longer sufficient. Justice must prevail.

 

 

 

 

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