Moroccan Scandal

[Balqis]

an interesting article

Moroccan shot dead after feud with royals

Ben Sills in Madrid
Monday August 16, 2004
The Guardian

A former aide to the Moroccan royal family who had been in a long-running feud with King Mohammed VI has been shot dead in Spain, possibly the victim of a professional hit.
Spanish police announced at the weekend that the body of a man discovered in a private car park between Fuengirola and Mijas on the Costa del Sol was that of Hicham Mandari. He had been shot in the head.

Mandari's death will not be much mourned in Rabat. He was considered a fraudster and a fantasist but was also close to the previous king, Hassan II, and there will be concern at what information any Spanish police investigation may uncover.

In 1999, Mandari left Morocco after allegedly stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the royal family as King Hassan II lay dying.

He then took out an advert in the Washington Post to warn the king: "For my defence, and the defence of those close to me, I have prepared a dossier of information which would be damaging to your reputation around the world."

Since then Mandari had faced a string of fraud-related accusations but consistently managed to avoid conviction.

"He manages to get himself out of all his legal problems thanks to the thousands that he has extorted from the royal coffers," a friend of Mandari told the Journal Hebdomadaire in Morocco in July.

In his last interview, Mandari again threatened the Moroccan royal family with damaging disclosures. He also claimed to be the illegitimate son of the current king's father and a palace aide, Farida Cherkaoui.

It is thought that Ms Cherkaoui facilitated Mandari's entry into palace circles and when it became clear that the king was dying, he conspired to make as much as he could while his influence remained.

He found not just cash, but, he claimed, personal material that would have embarrassed the royal family. After the succession of King Hassan's son, Mohammed VI, rumours of Mandari's dossier surfaced regularly.

In 2003, while possessing a handgun after two attempts on his life, he was arrested for attempting to blackmail Othman Benjelloun, the president of the Moroccan Bank of Foreign Commerce. He was released last July and gave his last interview to the Journal.

Again he threatened the Moroccan king with damaging disclosures. And he talked of further scandal in France.

"I know all the French ministers," he said. "I know Chirac very well. I called [the interior minister] Dominique de Villepin, but he had been told not to talk to me. I know lots of things about other politicians too."

Mandari's lawyer, William Bourdon, told Le Monde: "For a number of years he had felt that he was being hounded and threatened. He had no doubt that Mohammed VI held a very firm enmity for him. Nor did he have any doubt that the secrets that he claimed to be keeping represented a very real threat to the king. But my client was a man of many facets."

It is still under investigations...Anyway the guy was known to have an obscure life and that it was said he was so avid for power and money..God knows..

[mya]

wow..what could he have known that was worth his life? i wonder if it was something on the king himself or something about the royal family??

[madonna23]

i remember there were rumors on this forum pertaining to the king's sexuality...perhaps it had something to do with that?

[mya]

is his sexuality still in question? did salma know about his sexulity when she married him? there was talk that salma was picked to marry the mohammed vi by his father when he was still alive.