Monday 24 February 2025 
The secretary general of Morocco’s “Justice and Development” party, Abdelilah Benkirane, claimed that several politicians in the kingdom were “drug barons”.
During a local activity in Guercif (north-east of the kingdom) in the context of the by-elections, Benkirane underlined “the absence of morals and ethics among the political class for whom elections are now only a stepping stone to gaining power and serving one’s own interests”, noting that “political parties in Morocco no longer present militants, but businessmen and men of influence to secure seats in Parliament”.
He spoke of the use of money to win elections, a method used by businessmen and politicians, many of whom are “drug barons”, he said.
Benkirane stressed that “the triumph of the drug lords is a real threat and danger to families and the country in general”.
The intrusion of businessmen and drug barons into political life in Morocco has, as a reminder, been the subject of much criticism in recent years.
The former spokesman for the Moroccan Royal Palace, Hussein Aourid, had recently affirmed that “drug barons influence political decisions in the kingdom”.
In his new book titled “Morocco needs a cultural revolution”, Aourid made “accusations of the increasing influence of the drug mafia on political decision-making in the kingdom”.
“Our country (Morocco) experienced, at the beginning of the first decade of this century, practices close to the methods of the mafia that emerged through people with a history of drug trafficking, who employed elements close to them and sought to infiltrate the structure of the state by buying consciences. They penetrated the body politic and were able to approach the center of decision-making”, he wrote in one of the chapters of his book, picked up by the media.
Hussein Aourid’s testimonies, which confirm the conclusions of international reports on Morocco and drugs, are very important, “because they come from someone who knew the monarchy from the inside”, underlined international media.