embezzlement

Mali’s former prime minister, Choguel Maiga, has been charged with embezzlement and remanded in custody as the West African country’s military leaders intensify a crackdown over allegations of a coup plot.

The charges against Maiga were revealed on Tuesday following a hearing before Mali’s Supreme Court.

Maiga, who took office after a second coup in Mali in 2021, was sacked in November 2024 after he publicly denounced the military for a lack of clarity over when it would hand over power to a civilian government.

Maiga’s lawyer, Cheick Oumar Konare, told the AFP news agency that no date has yet been set for the former leader’s trial.

“We believe in justice, we are calm while awaiting the trial,” Konare said, explaining that Maiga would remain in prison for the trial.

A statement from the public prosecutor said the charges against Maiga involve “money laundering equal to many billions of CFA francs”, or several million US dollars.

The former prime minister was arrested one week ago, according to the AFP, days after Mali’s military leaders carried out dozens of arrests to quash an alleged plot within the army’s ranks to topple the government in turn.

Nine of Maiga’s colleagues from his time as prime minister also appeared before the court on Tuesday, with two being charged, some acquitted and others still awaiting their hearing, the AFP reported, citing a judicial source.

Earlier this month, another former prime minister, Moussa Mara, was imprisoned after tweeting his support for jailed critics of the military.

Mali has been gripped by a security crisis since 2012, driven by violence from armed groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and the ISIL (ISIS) group, as well as local criminal gangs. The fighting has resulted in thousands of deaths, while up to 350,000 people are currently displaced, according to Human Rights Watch.

The crisis set off mass protests in 2020, paving the way for the military to topple the country’s elected government in a coup.

The military briefly ceded power to a transitional government but took over in a second coup in 2021.

The colonel who led the two power grabs, Assimi Goita, was also sworn in as transitional president that year. Under his government, the military has reneged on pledges to hand back power to civilians by the end of March 2024, and has tightened its grip on power by dissolving all political parties, and jailing dissidents and leading civil society figures.

In July, the military-appointed legislative body also passed legislation that granted Goita a five-year presidential mandate, renewable “as many times as necessary” and without elections.

Maiga was one of the leaders of the protests that helped topple Mali’s civilian government in 2020, and previously said he believed the military would safeguard the country’s democracy. “We must refound the Malian state, so that no political power can ever again create the conditions for a return to an unconstitutional order!” he told Al Jazeera in an interview in 2023.

Since his dismissal, however, Maiga has become one of the military’s fiercest critics, accusing it of weaponising the courts to silence dissent.

Experts, meanwhile, have described Maiga’s arrest and imprisonment on Tuesday as a sign of the military government’s fragility.

“If the most prominent opposition leaders are arrested and imprisoned, including Choguel, who once gave the junta credibility, then I believe today the junta credibility is greatly weakened,” said Alioune Tine, the former United Nations rapporteur on Mali to the Security Council.

“Just 50km [31 miles] from Bamako, you’re still in danger. Al-Qaeda’s affiliate JNIM controls most of the territory. The only way forward now is for President Goita to change course: free political prisoners, release activists and journalists, and open a national dialogue that leads to real democratic elections,” he said.

Mali’s military leaders have replaced Maiga with General Abdoulaye Maiga, who had previously served as government spokesman in the West African country.

The military’s power grab in Mali helped set off a wave of coups in the Sahel region, south of the Sahara desert, including in the neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, which are fighting the same groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL.

The three countries have withdrawn from the Economic Community of West African States amid pressure from the bloc to return to civilian government. They have now banded together to form the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) and created a 5,000-strong force for joint military operations to try to drive out armed groups.

L.A. County prosecutors plan to file additional corruption charges this week against City Councilman Curren Price, who is already facing multiple counts of grand theft and perjury for allegedly voting in favor of projects his wife had a financial interest in, multiple sources told The Times.

The charges were expected to be made public Thursday during a pretrial hearing in downtown L.A., according to three people with knowledge of the situation, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about an ongoing criminal case.

In June 2023, Price was charged with 10 counts of grand theft by embezzlement, perjury and conflict of interest. Prosecutors said Price’s wife — Del Richardson, founder of the consulting company Del Richardson & Associates — received “payments totaling more than $150,000 between 2019 and 2021 from developers before [Price] voted to approve projects.”

The perjury charges stem from a claim that Price didn’t list his wife’s income on disclosure forms. Prosecutors also accused Price of theft by embezzlement for bilking the city out of tens of thousands of dollars by placing Richardson on his city-issued healthcare plan between 2013 and 2017, before they were legally married.

Price’s attorney, Michael Schafler, called the new charges “nothing more than an attempt to pile on to a weak case.”

“They have gone back as much as 6 years, combing through thousands and thousands of votes, to find a couple more allegedly conflicted votes, hoping that the public will overlook the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that Councilmember Price was aware of the alleged conflicts when he voted for the agenda items,” Schafler said in a statement.

The original criminal complaint was filed roughly four years after a Times investigation found Price had repeatedly cast votes that affected housing developers and other firms listed as clients of his wife’s consulting company.

The new charges relate to similar conduct related to votes that Price cast, according to two of the sources. One of the sources said the votes related to contracts for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the city’s housing authority.

A spokesman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said a press release would be issued later on Tuesday.

In an October 2023 motion seeking to dismiss the charges, Price’s legal team argued prosecutors failed to show the payments to Richardson had any influence on the councilman’s votes. Many of the votes described in the criminal complaint were also approved by an overwhelming majority of the council, meaning Price did not swing any one decision that could financially benefit Richardson.

Schafler also argued the embezzlement charges are invalid because Price did not have control over the funds used to pay for Richardson’s healthcare, which is a required element of the crime under California law. Price’s conduct might meet the definition of grand theft, Schafler wrote in 2023, but the statute of limitations for that crime had long expired.

A judge rejected Schafler’s motion. Price is expected to face a preliminary hearing later this year.

Price, who was first elected in 2013, must leave office due to term limits at the end of 2026. Several candidates have already launched campaigns to replace him in a district that stretches from the Los Angeles Convention Center in downtown to 95th Street in South L.A.

Times Staff Writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.