The Moroccan Exchange Office recovered more than two billion dirhams ($200 million) of money smuggled out of the country during 2024.
According to a statement from the government office issued yesterday evening, Tuesday, the process of recovering the funds, which was called “automatic settlement,” which lasted throughout the past year, has ended.
The automatic settlement comes within the framework of “reducing the informal economy and enhancing financial transparency, by allowing Moroccans to settle their property and accounts abroad without facing legal consequences, provided that the prescribed settlement contribution is paid.”
The office said that the automatic settlement process of inventorying property and assets established abroad recorded during the year 2024 about 658 declarations with a total of more than two billion dirhams ($200 million).
Money back
He added that the recovered funds include “financial assets worth 916.2 million dirhams ($91 million), real estate worth 868.3 million dirhams ($86 million), and cash assets worth 244.7 million dirhams ($24.4 million).”
The first process of amnesty for money smugglers, which was implemented in 2014, enabled Morocco to recover about 27.8 billion dirhams ($3 billion) of money smuggled abroad during the same year, and the same process was launched in 2019.
The penalties and fines for smuggling money outside the country amounted to 6 times the amount being smuggled, in addition to a prison sentence between one month and 5 years, if the file of the owner of the smuggled money was referred to the judiciary.
