Algeria dismantles criminal network that drained around 10 billion dinars from state-linked tobacco company

Algeria's Central Service for the Fight against Organised Crime (SCLCO), based in Saoula, announced on Wednesday 10 June that it had dismantled a criminal network accused of embezzling and squandering public funds at United Tobacco Company (UTC), a tobacco trading and distribution firm operating under a majority public-capital structure. The Direction générale de la Sûreté nationale (DGSN) put total losses at close to 1,000 billion centimes — equivalent to around 10 billion dinars, or roughly one billion euros.

Investigators from the SCLCO's brigade for economic and financial crimes worked the case for more than three months before making arrests. According to the DGSN statement, the network inserted false data into UTC's information systems, recording tobacco products as dispatched to sales branches that never in fact received them. An inventory and accounts review for the 2025 financial year first revealed an unexplained stock deficit valued at around 500 billion centimes. Continuing their inquiry, investigators uncovered a second financial anomaly of equivalent size: uncollected receivables owed by clients of the company, bringing the estimated total damage to close to 1,000 billion centimes.

Ten arrested, assets seized in Algeria and Spain

Ten suspects were taken into custody. The DGSN identified them as current and former directors and managers of UTC, employees at various levels of responsibility, and a wholesale tobacco trader with outside links to the network. Authorities also located and seized assets belonging to one of the principal suspects: two luxury villas — one in Algiers and one in Spain — six high-end apartments of which five are in Algeria and one in Spain, a 900-square-metre plot of land in the wilaya of Jijel, three luxury vehicles, a large-displacement motorcycle, four luxury watches, a hunting rifle, and a sum of money in national currency.

At the close of the preliminary investigation, all ten were referred to the public prosecutor at the Economic and Financial Criminal Pole of Sidi M'Hamed, in Algiers. They face charges including abuse of office, deliberate squandering of public funds, granting undue advantages in contracts concluded in breach of current legislation, money laundering within an organised criminal structure, and violations of foreign-exchange and capital-movement regulations.

A company with majority public capital

UTC is a mixed Algerian-Emirati company based in Koléa, in the wilaya of Tipaza. Its 51 percent Algerian stake is held by Madar Holding, the state-owned public holding company that emerged from the restructuring of the historic Société nationale des tabacs et allumettes (SNTA). The 49 percent Emirati share is held by private investors. Madar Holding's own website confirms the group holds a 51 percent participation in UTC. Because majority capital is public, the Economic and Financial Criminal Pole applied the charge of deliberate squandering of public funds rather than ordinary commercial fraud.

Le Matin d'Algérie reported that the current case forms part of a broader judicial investigation that has been running since autumn 2025, encompassing UTC, its sister company the Algerian-Emirati Tobacco Company (STAEM), and their parent Madar Holding. The former head of Madar Holding, Charaf-Eddine Amara, left his post in October 2025 and was placed under pre-trial detention in December 2025 by the same Sidi M'Hamed financial pole on charges of money laundering, illicit enrichment and conflict of interest. Several other UTC and STAEM executives have since been remanded or placed under judicial supervision. All individuals in these proceedings are presumed innocent; the various case files remain under instruction or before the competent courts.