PARIS: Rafik Khalifa, a former tycoon once hailed as the “Algerian Bill Gates”, was yesterday sentenced in absentia to five years in jail by a French court for embezzling millions when his group went bankrupt.
The 48-year-old, who was once held up as a paradigm for the generation of young Algerians who grew up during the bloody civil war, fled to Britain in 2003 when his business empire collapsed, costing the Algerian state and individuals hundreds of millions of euros.
In 2007, Algeria convicted him in absentia of criminal involvement and fraud, sentencing him to life in prison and demanding his extradition from Britain, which finally took place last December.
He is currently awaiting re-trial after Algeria’s supreme court quashed the verdict in 2012.
France also charged him with embezzlement as some of his group’s subsidiaries were based there. Yesterday, a court in the Paris suburb of Nanterre handed out the jail sentence, fined him ¤375,000 ($470,000) and issued an arrest warrant for him.
The court found he had “looted” his company just before it went bankrupt, by hiding “some of its most significant assets” such as luxury cars, apartments in Paris and a ¤35m property in the Cannes Riviera resort.
AFP
