Hamza Al Sid Cheikh, the scapegoat in the 2.4 million euro affair
The case of the 2.4 million euros seized at Paris CDG airport has brought down the head of one of the members of Tebboune's electoral campaign management committee. Less than 24 hours after his appointment, he was dismissed for ‘serious misconduct’.
Hamza Al Sid Cheikh, 41 years old, former Sahara Minister Delegate for the Environment (from January 2020 to February 2021) in the first government of Abdelmadjid Tebboune's mandate, presided over by Abdelaziz Djerrad.
On Monday 19 August, he was appointed to lead the campaign of the ‘free candidate Abdelmadjid Tebboune at the national level’ (see document No. 1), by the campaign manager, Brahim Merad, Minister of the Interior on leave until the end of the campaign. Less than 24 hours later, just after the announcement of the Paris CDG airport scandal, he was dismissed, in a terse press release (see document No. 2), for ‘serious misconduct (...) consisting in the use of his mandate was what he needed of the framework that had been specifically assigned to him’.
A vague accusation despite its seriousness. The use of the mandate outside the legal framework appears to be his direct involvement in the 2.4 million euro affair. According to corroborating sources, he was the initiator of this affair, which had been approved by all members of Tebboune's campaign management, headed by Brahim Merad.
‘If Hamza Al Sid Cheikh had been solely responsible for the ‘serious misconduct’, he would have been pilloried and handed over to the mafia to project the image of a clean and honest Tebboune,’ a source close to the president-candidate told us. This young man, born in Metlili (wilaya of Ghardaïa), is unknown on the political scene and to Algerian public opinion, despite a brief stint in the government. He already participated in the 2019 campaign and was considered a key element in Tebboune's acceptance by the Mozabite community.
This year, for the second mandate sought by the current tenant of the El-Mouradia palace, he was an afterthought. Indeed, when Tebboune was due to visit Ghardaïa for the election campaign. When Hamza arrived at 61 Souidani Boudjemaa boulevard, Tebboune's campaign headquarters, he found himself at the centre of the 2024 presidential election scandal. A scandal that was quickly hushed up thanks to a press with its hands tied, a non-existent political opposition and unrestrained repression. Even in France, the scandal was classified as news. And nobody is interested in what is happening in Algeria anymore. It is a bit like ‘silence, fraud, theft and vote’.
