Tunisian FM urges judiciary to speed up handling of looted funds abroad cases

The Tunisian Foreign Minister, Khemaies Jhinaoui on Tuesday has called on his country’s judiciary to speed up reviewing the cases of looted funds abroad, so that the state can retrieve it.

Jhinaoui told Anadolu news agency on the sidelines of his meeting Tuesday with his Swiss counterpart, Didier Burkhalter that “the Tunisian judiciary should issue provisions on the money looted cases”.

Switzerland requires that Tunisia issues judicial decisions before it returns the looted funds frozen in Swiss banks.

“There are many cases, therefore there is delay in issuing decisions”, the minister said.

Switzerland announced in October, 2011 the freezing of Tunisian assets worth 60 million Swiss francs (48.7 million euros).

The former Tunisian president, Moncef Marzouki said the amount constitutes only 10 percent of the Tunisian funds deposited in Swiss banks.

The Central Bank of Tunisia said in June 2015, that it had located stolen funds in ten countries, namely Switzerland, France, Canada, Belgium, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Italy, and Spain, Lebanon, and Luxembourg.