FRANCAISQuartiers sans frontières - Comments
3) The institutional learning
-The quality of local partnership of QSF in developing countries also raises some questions. Regarding the Bab el-Oued’s floods, the organisation worked with the authorities and the Algerian Red Crescent in Alger when, at the same time, the press denounced the carelessness of governmental relief. While there was no proper co-ordination of humanitarian programmes, Chawki Amari writes for instance that some materials sent by MSF were kept by the Algerian customs and that a good part of aid was diverted. The airplane company that delivered QSF’s assistance in Bab el-Oued belonged to Rafik Abdelmoumen Khalifa. Considering the opacity of his accounts, he was accused of laundering money for the Algerian junta and in August 2003 Interpol put out an international search warrant for him. His father, deceased in 1988, had run a pharmacy, been a minister in the 1960s, and he had participated in the creation of the military security after Independence. From 1991, Rafik Abdelmoumen Khalifa made a fortune gambling on exchange rates and getting the monopole of distribution for fifteen essential medicines, imported with low customs duties. In February 2003, some of his closest partners were sued by the Algerian Justice for exporting illegally important sums of cash; Khalifa Bank was entrusted to an administrator, under the control of the Central Bank, then liquidated, causing the downfall of the other branches of the group.
