Ahmed Ali Saleh and his brother Khaled, will stand on trial in September next year [Getty/file photo]
A French court is to try two sons of Yemen’s late ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh next year over allegedly embezzling public funds that bought the clan flats in Paris, prosecutors said on Monday.
His eldest son, Ahmed Ali Saleh, and another son called Khaled Saleh are to stand trial in September 2026, the Paris financial prosecutor’s office said.
Anti-government protests, including over poverty and corruption, led to Ali Abdullah Saleh stepping down from power in 2012 following three decades of rule.
He then allied with Houthi rebels he had once fought in the north of the country, but after they seized the capital Sanaa in 2014, they killed the former president in 2017.
French prosecutors in charge of financial crime in 2019 opened a probe into suspicious fund transfers between Geneva and Paris, following a tipoff from Swiss authorities.
It found that a real estate company involving Ahmed Ali Saleh was used to buy at least two flats worth millions of euros in high-end parts of Paris, near the Champs-Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe.
The eldest son had received 30 million euros ($35.3 million) from Sanaa in a French bank account in his name. It was not immediately clear when these transfers were made.
Ahmed Ali Saleh has been under US and UN sanctions since 2015 for supporting the Iran-backed Houthi movement that has been fighting against the UN-recognised government.
Lawyers Clara Gerard-Rodriguez and Pierre-Olivier Sur said that their clients had done nothing illegal.
“Simply saying that regime was corrupt in no way proves that it was money from corruption that enabled his sons to purchase property in France,” Gerard-Rodriguez said.
Yemen has long been the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest nation, with more than half the population living in poverty by the end of 2011, according to the World Bank.
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