Algeria is again shaken by a scandal affecting its security services. The current head of the Algerian police, Farid Zineddine Bencheikh, is the subject of resounding new revelations which compromise the credibility of Algerian institutions.
For the Algerian journalist, exiled in France, Abdou Semmar, at the origin of the revelations, “the Algerian leaders are badly placed to speak of traitors”, because of their troubled relations with foreign powers.
A survey by the same investigative journalist was able to reveal several highly disturbing and embarrassing information for the Algerian authorities, who include among them a senior member of the security services leading a double life in France.
Indeed, the revelations show that the head of the General Directorate of National Security (DGSN), Farid Zineddine Bencheikh, abused and defrauded in France to renew a residence permit when he is supposed to be resident in Algeria.
After the first scandals concerning this head of the Algerian police which revealed illicit transfers of foreign currency abroad, cases of illicit enrichment by owning a bistro bar and hotel in Paris, and a collaboration described as “troubling for years with very sensitive security establishments under the French State”, a new file has just been unearthed.
Journalist Abdou Semmar had access to confidential documents from the French Public Administration claiming that Farid Zineddine Bencheikh was sanctioned by the French authorities in 2019 for having made a sham marriage in 2015 in France with a Dutch national resident in France since 1994 .
While the first elements of the investigation had revealed that the boss of the Algerian police had had a residence permit valid for 10 years since 2015, the new elements showed that Bencheikh tried to obtain a residence in life in France using a sham marriage, except that the French authorities have discovered the pot of roses.
Bencheikh’s fraudulent marriage to the Dutch national, a woman named Margaretha Ludovic Maria, to have French papers, was sanctioned by the cancellation of the Algerian police chief’s residence permit in 2019 while he runs until 2025 .
“The impudence that currently characterizes the Algerian police is embarrassing the Algerian presidency, which has been torn for several weeks by the controversies arising in the wake of the Farid Zineddine Bencheikh scandal,” commented the Maghreb intelligence news site.
The same source continued with irony that the Algerian police who “triggered a merciless war on the + opponents collaborating with foreign powers +, is itself led by a French resident who defrauded to settle in France and do business in brewery and catering.
The publication does not forget to recall that it was Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune who was behind the promotion granted in March 2021 to this senior Algerian security official.
According to sources in Algiers quoted by the site, the president’s relatives would advise him not to dismiss Farid Zineddine Bencheikh so as not to “offer a medal” to journalist Abdou Semmar.
For Maghreb intelligence, the members of national security are ashamed to work with Bencheikh and this case which is not over could “cost Tebboune very dearly, even his second term”.