CCPR/C/118/D/2128/2012
State party of articles 2 (3), 7, 10 (1), 14 (1) and (3) (b), (c) and (d), 17 (1) and 19 of the
Covenant. He is not represented by counsel. The Covenant and its Optional Protocol
entered into force for the State party on 12 December 1989.
The facts as submitted by the author
2.1
In 2004 the author was employed as an accountant at the State-owned road-building
and engineering corporation ETGR, whose main activity is road resurfacing. The company
is based at Mascara and is represented by its Managing Director.
2.2
On 20 January 2005, a dispute arose between the author and the Director of ETGR
over the company’s tax return for the month of December 2004. The Director had put
pressure on the author to enter a figure of zero for VAT-taxable turnover, when the true
figure was 15 billion centimes, calculated on the basis of actual receipts. In the author’s
view, the Director’s oral instructions were at odds with his professional duties, as the
Director was asking the author to make a false tax statement; he therefore refused to sign
the statement. The Director subsequently brought strong pressure to bear on another
employee and eventually managed to get him to sign a statement showing a VAT-taxable
turnover figure of zero.
2.3 On 26 January 2005, following his refusal to comply with the Director’s instructions,
the author received a letter of dismissal, informing him that his functions at ETGR would
be terminated as of 31 January 2005 because his contract would come to an end on that date,
even though the author was a permanent, not a contractual, employee.
2.4
On 2 February 2005, the author reported a number of criminal acts committed by the
Director of ETGR to the Mascara prosecution service: tax fraud, embezzlement,
squandering of public funds, unlawful procurement, acceptance of uncovered cheques for a
total of 1.1 billion centimes, forgery and use of forged documents, and destruction of
commercial documents.
2.5
On 25 March 2005, on the orders of the Mascara prosecution service, the economic
and financial unit of the Mascara police opened a preliminary investigation into the author’s
allegations. On 30 March 2005, the author was summoned by the Mascara criminal police.
When he arrived, he was questioned for an hour. He answered the investigators’ questions
and handed over all the evidence in his possession, along with a list of witnesses, and then
signed a record of his statements.
2.6
After the author had lodged his complaint, the Director of ETGR had the company’s
head of human resources, who was related to the Minister of the Interior and Local
Government, intervene. After the head of human resources had approached the Wilaya of
Mascara and pressure had been brought to bear on the criminal police and the Mascara
prosecution service, the police went to the ETGR head office and seized all the relevant
accounting records with the intention of destroying any trace of them. The investigating
officer subsequently stated that he had found no evidence to support the charges that had
been made. However, the author maintains that he was questioned by the police a second
time and provided investigators with the numbers of all the relevant accounting records,
which are registered in the computerized bookkeeping system.
2.7
On 20 April 2005, the author sent a letter to the regional police inspector, which he
copied to the chief prosecutor of Mascara and the chief of the intelligence and security
service of Mascara, objecting to the manner in which the preliminary investigation had
been conducted. He received no reply to his letter. The regional inspector did approach
police headquarters in Mascara to ask that the investigation be conducted fairly, but to no
avail.
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GE.16-23057