In the Pursuit of Financial Criminality in the Moroccan Public Sector

Abstract

Financial crime is a widespread issue for organizations, institutions. Criminals adopt more complex techniques to circumvent judicial scrutiny and conduct crimes as regulators and financial authorities use new strategies to detect and prevent financial offenses. Financial crimes are financial offenses perpetrated by individuals within organizations, most of the time in order to acquire a financial advantage through the employment of illegal methods. It involves taking money or other property that belongs to someone else, to obtain a financial or professional gain.

The purpose of this article is to present a review of academic literature on financial crimes theories that have emphasized the theatrical framework since the advent of the differential association theory developed by Edwin Sutherland in the 1940s, which shed light on the realms of finance and crime, and exhibit empirical findings from a documentary study of convicted public officials to provide an outline of the main forms of financial offenses that occur in the Moroccan public sector. This documentary study is founded on a nationwide sample of 139 final judgments that was collected based on financial court reports released between 2013 and 2019.

The wide range of financial infractions is classified in this paper by adopting two main categories of financial offenses that are, infractions that occur in the public spending area, and state revenues area. The majority of the offenders were convicted of breaking public procurement and public debt recovery legislation. Using a Likert scale (1 to 5), we concluded that, on average, public officials in high-ranking positions incurred severe financial sanctions. The findings also demonstrate a strong correlation between the offenders’ occupations rank and the heaviness of financial sentences.

This research only encompasses cases of financial offenses that have passed through the entire legal procedure and whose final decisions have already been issued; other sorts of financial offenses may be excluded owing to a lack of evidence to prosecute public officials. Furthermore, other data regarding financial offenses that occur in the public sphere are present in the criminal records of the criminal chamber responsible for financial crimes, or in cases reported by the National Authority for Probity, Prevention, and the Fight Against Corruption. However access to this data is a challenge.

JEL Classification: H42, H57, H71, K42, M48

Paper type: Theoretical Research