The Council of Ministers on Tuesday approved a new million-euro donation to Jaida S.A., which is run by a close associate of King Alaouite.
theobjective.com.- Pedro Sánchez’s government has already donated 21 million euros to the Moroccan company Jaida S.A., which is run by a close associate of the Alaouite monarch Mohamed VI. The latest donation was approved on Tuesday by the Council of Ministers, taking advantage of the fact that the media had been focusing on other issues: one million in the form of a donation for technical assistance. This amount comes on top of the 20 million that the government lent to the neighbouring country’s public company last October under the pretext of helping the poorest (specifically, “for the financing of the social and solidarity economy in Morocco”).
These awards came months after the president, in an unprecedented diplomatic about-turn, behind the backs of the Congress of Deputies and his United We Can coalition government partners, supported part of Morocco’s sovereignty claims in Western Sahara, antagonising strategic trade policy ally Algeria. With this decision, Sánchez opened a “new stage in the partnership” with Mohammed VI which has been showered with donations.
The first was approved at the Council of Ministers on 11 October, when members of the government agreed to donate 20 million euros to “various micro-finance companies through Jaida and its important distribution network, with branches and points of sale in the areas prioritised by Spanish cooperation”, as it would facilitate “an alignment with the priorities of AECID in the country, enabling possible synergies for Spanish action in different areas of development”.
Two and a half months later, the coalition government once again allocated millions of euros, but this time for the “creation of products to finance and support cooperative ecosystems in the Kingdom of Morocco and the extension of Jaida S.A.’s activity to finance the social and solidarity economy in Morocco”. The issue was neglected in the subsequent press conference.
Pablo Cambronero, a member of the Mixed Group, has already asked about these donations. Specifically, he asked the Congress Bureau for the Government to “report on the exact activities to which the €21,000,000 it donated to the company will be dedicated”, “who are the owners, shareholders and concrete projects” of this company, and whether “any member of the Government has any economic or any other kind of interest in Morocco”. “We must investigate, it stinks…,” he argued on the social network Twitter.
🔴 En octubre el Gobierno donó 20 millones de € a la empresa JAIDA (que se dedica a financiar empresas marroquíes)
Hoy donan 1.000.000€ para “asistencia técnica” de la misma empresa.
Pregunto por ello y por las donaciones constantes a Marruecos.
Hay que investigar, apesta… pic.twitter.com/Y3Xqslmp2S
— Pablo Cambronero 🇪🇦🇪🇸 (@PabloCamPiq) December 27, 2022
Jaida and Mohammed VI
Jaida S.A. belongs to the Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion (CDG) group, a publicly owned bank that manages the National Pension Fund. Its CEO is Khalid Safir, a close associate of Mohammed VI, who was appointed by King Alaouite himself at the Moroccan Council of Ministers on 13 July. Safir had previously been, among other positions, Governor of Casablanca, Secretary General of the Ministry of Economy and Finance and Director of Resources Modernization and Information Systems at the Moroccan General Treasury.
In addition to the aid to this company, the Ministry of the Interior granted 30 million euros to the neighbouring country to externalise border control. Fernando Grande-Marlaska justified this expenditure by assuring that it is “aid” to “contribute to covering the expenses incurred in operational deployments, together with the cost of maintenance of materials used by Moroccan police services in carrying out actions of collaboration with Spain in the surveillance of borders and in the fight against irregular immigration to Spanish coasts and territories”.