Europe 1 with AFP 9:58 a.m., February 9, 2024
The prosecution on Thursday requested a prison sentence against four leaders of the Villeneuve-d'Ascq mosque (North), prosecuted for prohibited rental investments intended to finance the religious establishment and 200,000 euros in loans to the Averroès Muslim high school.
The prosecution on Thursday requested a prison sentence against four leaders of the Villeneuve-d'Ascq mosque (North), prosecuted for prohibited rental investments intended to finance the religious establishment and 200,000 euros in loans to the Averroès Muslim high school. These defendants were on trial in Lille for breach of trust, money laundering, and three of them for attempted fraud. The prosecution requested six to ten months in prison accompanied by 12 to 14 months of suspended sentence for them, and a simple suspended sentence for a fifth defendant, requesting accommodation so that they can serve their possible sentence at home. The court reserved its decision until March 15.
A lack of transparency in the balance sheets
On the dock: five graying fifty-year-olds, mostly glasses and short-cut beards, long-time leaders of the Islamic Center of Villeneuve-d'Ascq (CIV), and several former employees or parents of students at the Averroès high school. The CIV accounts were scrutinized after a report from the Northern prefecture in 2022 pointing to a lack of transparency in its balance sheets. The prefecture decided at the end of 2023 to suspend Averroès' subsidies, accusing him of "serious breaches of the fundamental principles of the Republic", putting his future in question.
In a 2023 report on Averroès, the prefect raised the possibility that the CIV, which received donations from Kuwait or Egypt, had made “false loans” to the establishment in order to serve as a screen for foreign financing for high school. At the hearing, the treasurer of the mosque, Abdellah Ouafi, stressed that Averroès had repaid certain loans, and that steps were underway to recover the 200,000 euros still owed.
>> READ ALSO -
Suspicion of radicalization: what the damning report on the Averroès high school in Lille contains
“The Republic fought the wrong fight, shot itself in the foot”
The mosque waived debts because "the high school almost closed", he stressed, adding that the members of the association managing the mosque were informed of these loans, and that the faithful supported them massively. “If the CIV were a company, Averroès would be a subsidiary,” assured a defense lawyer, Mehdi Ziatt. In addition, the CIV had acquired two houses via an SCI to provide student studios, rented in order to ensure financial “independence”, explained its president Mohamed Karrat.
But the prosecution stressed that it was prohibited for an association to make rental investments. The social purpose of the CIV was to provide a dignified place of worship and services for the faithful, but not to finance a high school or student accommodation, insisted the prosecutor. Deploring "small-scale management" and "the irremovability" of the mosque's leaders, she called for more democracy in the governing bodies of this important place of worship, temporarily entrusted to a judicial administrator.
Stressing that the prosecution was not "the armed arm of the prefecture" and that it was not a question of "putting the Averroès high school on trial", she deplored that this file was seen "on a political level". “The Republic fought the wrong battle, shot itself in the foot,” said another defense lawyer, Me Pianezza. “When there is a CIV, it prevents us from praying in cellars and garages, and we know what that leads to.”