August 2025

I want to pay tribute to my aunt Colette, my mother’s beloved sister, for choosing to share this testimony. Tati Colette, as my brother Karim and I used to call her, has always remained close to my parents and to me, in moments of happiness as well as in times of hardship.

She was by Mom’s side and with her at Dad’s bedside when he was hospitalized in Bordeaux or in Rabat. She is still at our side, facing this injustice today.

“We left Morocco at the end of 1977 after eighteen years spent in that beautiful country. At that time, Soufiane Elkabous was still just a child, far from what he would later become.

Later, as an adolescent in total academic failure, he rejected the education that my brother-in-law, M’Jid, and my sister, Pierrette, tried to give him.

When we saw him again in Morocco fifteen years later, he had become an adult, physically imposing, already temperamental, unmanageable, authoritarian, and aggressive. And in the many times we crossed paths with him afterward, he only confirmed this image.

After serving in the gendarmerie, from which he was eventually dismissed for questionable behavior, he had already become the owner of several apartments, luxury cars, and had ready cash at his disposal. On a gendarme’s salary!

Away from the M’Jid family, he even bragged about regularly paying colleagues to replace him at his gendarme post during his shift, ordering them to ‘turn their backs’ when suspicious shipments were announced to him.

After that, his assets multiplied very quickly: La Notte, a farm, a beauty salon, studios rented out by the half-day, and, of course, always more cash. Who can accumulate so many assets without really working? We never got an answer.

Little by little, his ties with the M’Jid family weakened. Contacts became rarer. He lived his shady life away from us. The M’Jid family, asking themselves questions, were afraid to understand. M’Jid himself, out of dismay, had even asked him to be less present and not to flaunt his luxury cars in front of the family home.

One day, my sister told him someone had bothered her during her morning walk, and he went out of the house and beat up the first poor man he came across in the street, even though he knew he was not the culprit! This innocent man was severely injured. One hundred and fifty kilos against fifty… such ‘bravery’!

He had become, and he has remained, brutal, closed to dialogue, rejecting reasonable discussion and never tolerating dissent. Surrounded by cowardly, self-interested sycophants, on their knees and at his service, he frightens his employees, whom he treats like slaves.

After M’Jid’s death, my sister came to our home in France more often. During her stays with us, we clearly observed that she would go two or three weeks without any contact with him. Their relationship was deeply strained. We were relieved, because he was hurting my sister and had never deserved the affection that the whole M’Jid family had given him.

Ungrateful, he knew only how to impose himself through uncontrolled violence.

After the death of my dear brother-in-law and sister, the parents of my niece Asma, he decided, through clearly fraudulent maneuvers, to rob her of everything. He moved into the family home, and he emptied my sister’s bank account.

Asma cannot even safely travel to Morocco to recover her inheritance, as she is directly threatened by Elkabous and his mafia network, which he pays to execute his orders outside of the law.

I myself underwent a humiliating and threatening check at Casablanca airport by one of his men, who clearly told me he wanted to prevent me from leaving after my brother-in-law’s funeral.

May all those who knew and loved her parents give their support to Asma. She cannot fight this battle alone. She needs each and every one of you. Thank you.

It comes from the heart.”

— Colette

It should no longer be necessary to bring further testimony about the criminal Elkabous after all I and others have already revealed. His actions speak for themselves, so long as one does not decide to ignore them. Yet, it seemed important to me to make an exception here and share the perspective of a family member who knew him from the beginning with us all the way to what he has become today, a blight on society.  Asma

After exposing how Soufiane Elkabous illegally appropriated the M’Jid name and turned the MJID Foundation from a public-serving institution into a tool for self-promotion, a quiet change appeared quietly, behind the scenes, on the foundation’s website.

For years, the usurper displayed the fake name “Soufiane Elkabous M’Jid” on the foundation’s website, placing it directly beneath my father’s name, deliberately creating and sustaining the false illusion that he was the natural heir. I made it clear in the same article: Elkabous has no legal ties and no blood ties to my father, to my family, or to our name.

By Sunday, August 17, 2025, the usurper finally had the name “M’Jid” removed from his surname on the foundation’s site. His name now reflects his legal identity, as it always should have: Abousoufiane Elkabous.

Not M’Jid.

It took public exposure to force him, in shame, to stop stealing my family’s name. 

But erasing the name doesn’t cleanse the past, or the intent. On the contrary, it shows he always knew exactly what he was doing, manipulating the foundation’s image. It confirms yet again how Elkabous and his circle shamelessly falsify information to serve their corrupt interests.

He also added a small section about Mr. Berrada, presented as president from 2014 to 2018, to suggest a separation between my father’s death and his own takeover. But why was that name removed in the first place, if not to fabricate a direct link between my father and himself? The answer is obvious. In truth, the foundation’s social media was already flooded with promotions centered on Elkabous: his face, his appearances, his false name, everywhere.

In 2018, the year my mother was killed, Elkabous seized the last remaining powers and made his takeover official. That same year, my father’s final close collaborators left the foundation.

Now that Elkabous has finally removed the false name he gave himself on the foundation’s website, will he contact the donors he deliberately misled to tell them the truth and apologize for this willful deception?

Sunlight is indeed the best disinfectant.

For Dad.

I arrived in Casablanca on the night of April 3, 2024. The next day, April 4, I visited the graves of my parents and my brother. That same day, I confronted Soufiane Elkabous about his scheme to steal my parents’ home and learned that their belongings had been taken, stolen, or removed.

On the morning of April 5, I went to the BMCI Val d’Anfa branch with my Moroccan national ID and my mother’s death certificate. I wanted to access my mother’s accounts and review the funds she had left for me.

A bank officer of the Val d’Anfa branch approached me quickly, then went to his desk, presumably to check something. He returned a minute later and said flatly, “We don’t show any active accounts for your mother. They were closed. The funds are gone. There’s nothing left.”

After her death?

I stood there, stunned.

I asked how anyone could have withdrawn funds after she was gone without authorization or a will. He just repeated that the accounts were closed. I asked to speak with the branch manager. He refused, saying I couldn’t talk to the manager because I didn’t have an active account with them. I showed my ID and my mother’s death certificate, and asked for at least the last bank statement. He refused, dismissively.

The Val d’Anfa branch never contacted me again, despite the seriousness of what had happened.

My mother’s bank balance included the monthly allowance His Majesty King Mohammed VI had granted to her after my father’s death, some personal savings, and the proceeds from the sale of two plots of land my father had left her near Rabat. Mom had used only a portion of the land-sale proceeds to clear the house title and make renovations. The bulk of the funds remained.

My mother kept her checkbooks and account records in the safe, to which she had given me the combination, the same safe that Elkabous admitted to breaking into and emptying.

Mom had been clear. She was leaving an ample amount in her bank accounts and an reserve so that I would always have means to live in Morocco when I chose.

As with all of my parents’ belongings, everything was gone. This time, however, a bank agency, meant to safeguard assets, had directly or indirectly enabled the theft. My mother left money in her accounts. It was emptied after her passing. I have no siblings alive. The agency released those funds to an unauthorized party.

Of course, I asked Elkabous the fraudster. And, as with my parents’ home and belongings, he initially denied everything. Then he cycled through a series of stories, often contradicting himself, before finally admitting to yet another crime.

• First, he claimed he knew nothing about the withdrawals or the account closures.
• Then he said he had taken money to repay debts my father supposedly had, even though Dad had passed four years earlier.
• Next, he claimed there was no money left when he checked.
• Then he said my mother had sent a large sum to her family in France.
• After that, he claimed my mother owed him the money.
• Finally, looking me straight in the eye, he admitted he had taken everything, simply because he had decided it belonged to him. Once again, he had stolen what did not belong to him. He no longer even tried to lie. He believed he was untouchable, and he wanted me to know it. He wanted to make me understand that I had lost, that there was nothing I could do to stop him.

All of these twisted lies were delivered in a single conversation, while he, unworthy as he is, sat behind my father’s desk, inside what had once been my father’s office, now disgraced by this criminal’s mere presence, in the foundation he had taken over and corrupted. He lied as if the truth had never meant anything to him. He spoke with the ease of someone who had long since buried every trace of conscience and decency..

Of course, the inconsistencies were obvious. My father could not have contracted new debts four years after his death. My mother was not, and could not have been, financially depleted. She was receiving the monthly allowance from His Majesty the King, had just sold two plots of land, and lived a simple life. A large transfer to France would have required documentation and authorization. In all cases, Mom would have told me. It was all fabrication, until his ultimate admission:

Soufiane Elkabous had emptied my mother’s bank accounts after she had died and stolen the money. Was anything safe from this hardened criminal?

However, this time, unlike at my parents’ home, he could not act under the cover of night. He had to violate the privacy and security of a bank agency. The Val d’Anfa branch allowed Elkabous the fraudster or one of his accomplices, the wrong party either way, to empty and close my mother’s bank accounts after her passing.

Why? Did he walk in with a gun? Did they simply hand it to him?

They went even further by refusing to provide me, her daughter, any transparency, thereby protecting the crime. If this is how a bank branch operates, why wouldn’t any criminal walk in and claim the money of whoever they choose? Isn’t this precisely what happened here?

The bank agency that emptied my mother’s accounts into the hands of a criminal – one with no blood relationship to her, no legal relationship either, no shared surname or maiden name, not named in her will, holding no valid document authorizing withdrawals, and in likely violation of its own banking procedures – would not even allow me, her daughter, with the same last name and proper identification, to speak with a bank manager about the missing funds and improperly closed accounts.

What a dark irony!

Is there anything in Elkabous’s world that is not rotten to the core?

By his own admission, Elkabous is the criminal here. However, the Val d’Anfa branch at the very least facilitated the theft and shares responsibility for it. Was this professional misconduct? Did he have an accomplice inside the branch? BMCI leadership must now investigate, sanction, and repair what happened within it.

Moreover, once the situation became known, the Val d’Anfa agency should have provided me, the rightful heir, with all relevant information about this transaction, including the parties involved, the account details, the amounts, the communications, and any known connection to Elkabous. It should also have alerted BMCI’s management, which in all likelihood would then have escalated the matter to the Moroccan Banking Authority, Bank Al-Maghrib. It does not seem any of that was done. I was never contacted. A full investigation is required. If we cannot trust our bank branches to safeguard deposits, how can society function?

I hope the Moroccan banking authority pursues this case with vigor and determination, wherever the facts lead. I will also evaluate different options. The Val d’Anfa agency failed on multiple levels for this theft to occur. BMCI’s management must now begin repairing the damage by returning to me, as the rightful heir, the funds my mother had entrusted to it and that were wrongly released. The bank may then decide to seek recovery from Elkabous. That is its choice, of course. What cannot be erased, however, is the agency’s failure to safeguard the integrity of its procedures, to protect the funds entrusted to it, and to take responsibility for placing them in the hands of a thief.

My mother’s intention was clear: she left me that money.
Elkabous’s intention was just as clear: the law does not apply to him.
He seizes a foundation created to help others and uses it for his personal needs.
He steals an identity.
He breaks into a private safe.
He takes everything inside.
He forges documents and files them in national registries.
He occupies a house that is not his, without right or title.
He strips it of everything it contains.
Over and over again, without ever facing consequences.
And now, he plunders bank accounts too.

This latest theft committed by Elkabous was made possible by the failures of the Val d’Anfa agency. BMCI must now assume its responsibility and correct the shortcomings of its branch. As for Elkabous, it is time this now notorious criminal to start paying for his crimes.

I landed in Casablanca on April 3, 2024. What I found was worse than anything I could have imagined.

Soufiane Elkabous was waiting at the airport, which was unusual. As we drove away, I noticed we weren’t heading toward my cousin’s place or his, but toward my parents’ home. When I asked why, he said that he was temporarily staying there while his own house was under renovation.

Outside, the house looked completely different. A large “Foundation MJID” sign stood out front. Empty parking spaces were marked as reserved for the foundation. A uniformed guard was posted at the entrance. I was surprised. The foundation had its own offices, and we had never needed guards at the house. Why would managing a presumed non-profit foundation require such protection?

It was overwhelming to enter this house without either of my parents there to greet me. Elkabous’s wife and children were in the living room, and at first, the noise was almost a relief.

I began noticing changes immediately. Very shortly after, Elkabous left, and his wife offered to take me on a “tour.” I found it odd. I had grown up in this house, but I went along out of politeness. A bad feeling began to creep in.

Some furniture had been moved. Other pieces were gone. Rooms had been rearranged. I began to notice more and more items missing. His wife caught my reaction and assured me that all my parents’ belongings had been meticulously packed and stored safely at the foundation. It seemed less and less like a temporary arrangement while their own home was being renovated.

Then came the worst moment of all. We reached my mother’s room. The bedroom my mother left that August morning in 2024 for her daily walk, from which she never returned. Not only had Elkabous ignored my request to leave it exactly as it was, but he had even torn down walls, altered the layout, and removed all her belongings.

How could this be? I broke down. He had erased my mother’s memory. I had wanted to say goodbye to Mom in that room. To whom could I turn? My parents were gone, and the crook I had once asked them to raise and feed had stolen their most personal possessions and had taken possession of their home, my home. And he had done all this while assuring me he was taking care of it for me. He was not only a crook. He was evil personified.

When I confronted him, he lied again and again, each time with a different story. First, he insisted he had only moved in temporarily while his own home was being renovated. Then he claimed he had moved in three months earlier and had wanted to tell me, but did not know how. Finally, he said he wanted to buy the house from me and that he would decide the price.

The next day, it got even worse. Although his wife had assured me that all my parents’ belongings were carefully packed and stored at the foundation, he now claimed he had discarded them all because everything was damaged by moisture. Everything. This, despite his constant access to the house. Imagine that.A lifetime of my parents’ belongings, removed, hidden, and stolen from me. Furniture, pots and pans, plates, cutlery, clothing, art, paintings, photos, appliances, perfumes, jewelry — all gone. Moisture? Really? Why this effort to erase my parents and deny me access to everything that came from them? The very people who had fed and housed him? He was a monster.

I later discovered that he and his family had in fact been living rent-free in my parents’ home for years without my knowledge and without my permission. All the while, the liar was reassuring me that he was watching over it. They had changed everything and even torn down walls, and not only those of my mother’s bedroom.

When he realized I no longer believed him, he changed tactics and reverted to his go-to behavior: that of a thug. He slammed the table in a threatening way and raised his voice at me. “No one will take this house from me,” he screamed.

His mask was off. The crook was determined to steal the house, knowing full well it was not his. My mother had left a copy of the will in the safe he had emptied. He had stolen it, of course. She had also told everyone, family and friends, in Morocco, France, and the USA, that everything she left behind in Morocco would be for me. Even friends from her card club who came to her funeral reminded us she had been preparing it for me. 

“Well, it is not your house,” I replied. “It is mine.”

This ungrateful and shameless thug, feeling above the law, began screaming that he, and only he, would decide who owned the house.

He then tried a series of schemes to rob me of the house.

First came the invented debts. For the first time ever, he claimed my parents owed him $700,000 and that he had documents to prove it. He also indicated he had somehow managed to file a lien on the house for that debt in 2019, the specifics of which we will discuss below. As a reminder, 2019 was five years after my father had died and nearly a year after my mother had passed. Neither of them could have signed any debt acknowledgment.

Forgery comes naturally to Soufiane Elkabous. Even more troubling is that he was able to file documents that were clearly forged, obligating people who had died years earlier, and referring to funds that were never transferred. How was such blatant fraud possible?

I pushed back. I told Elkabous that neither of my parents needed to borrow money at that stage of their lives. Dad had business interests and pension from decades of service to the country. As for Mom, His Majesty King Mohammed VI had granted her a generous pension following my father’s death and she had the money from the sale of the two plots of land Dad had left her near Rabat.

And, considering what my mother feared and shared with my aunt, her sister, and with me this crook in the few years before her passing, he would have been the very last person in the world she would have approached if she had needed anything. And, she hadn’t.

Elkabous moved to approach number two. He threatened to create a new will that would reduce my inheritance to only 33 percent of the house. It is hard to follow, I know, as this was years after my mother’s passing and he was talking about creating a will in her name. As he lost his temper while I refused to concede, he was no longer even trying to hide that he was forging documents as he went.

His sense of power came from the fact that he had already generated and recorded forged documents with impunity, could do it again if he chose, and wanted me to know it.

Then he moved to approach number three and said that he alone would decide how much of the house to leave me in the new will, and walked away.

I later learned that the reason he and his “lawyer” had asked me to dissolve ASKA earlier was because the house was still registered in the name of ASKA, the civil corporation my parents had created, and they had been unable to change that.

Before I left Morocco, realizing I would not give in and knowing I was on to him, he offered to “settle.” He proposed paying me one-third of the house’s value in exchange for my signature on the title and my silence. He said he would send the money to the USA through channels he worked with, bypassing the Foreign Exchange Office and using an existing network of money traffickers with which he was affiliated. His network, he said, had a strong presence in Miami, Florida, and a smaller one in New York.

It was unacceptable. It was illegal. It was far from the right amount, and it did nothing to address the entirety of his theft. I would not be paid to remain silent. I no longer wanted him in my parents’ house. He didn’t deserve it. And I would not deal with money traffickers or anyone connected to him. I refused.

After I left Morocco, he began telling people he had purchased the house from me. I find it ironic that he thereby implicitly admitted he could not own it without properly buying it, a fact he now tries to deny. Some asked whether that was true, so let me be clear: I never sold the house to him. He never bought it from me. He does not even pay rent. He is a liar, a squatter, and a thief.

Soufiane Elkabous entered my mother’s bedroom. On the very day she was killed. Before she was even buried. He broke into her private safe. He stole its entire contents. He publicly uses a name that is not his own. He lied deliberately and relentlessly. He forged documents. He created fake debts. He knowingly filed those forgeries in national registries, thereby corrupting the very integrity of those registries. He moved into my parents’ home without any right. He stole everything in it. Everything. He still illegally occupies my family’s home today.

He readily admits the near entirety of these facts, which are also corroborated by evidence.

I hope that Morocco, as a state governed by the rule of law, will ensure that the competent judicial authorities see that this long record of violations of Moroccan law leads to the opening of a transparent investigation and to the conviction of this self-avowed criminal and his accomplices with the full force and to the full extent of the law.

The sooner, the better.

Indeed, would it not be illusory to believe that the actions I have described here only began with the theft of my parents’ house and are limited to it? That they do not concern, for example, the operation of the foundation? Or his other business dealings? That they do not influence the very nature of those dealings?

Based on reactions to these writings, it seems that many have known for a long time what he is, but many have been silenced under threat. I do not judge anyone for that. He is a crook and a thug of the worst kind. But most who knew him knew.

Just this week, someone I have known for over 20 years, who lives in Casablanca,  shared my post on Facebook with his clients, then promptly deleted his entire account and disappeared. Others called me directly to express their private support, while apologizing for their public silence due to pressure and threats. Others emailed me messages of support via the site to remain anonymous. I appreciate their support. I respect their request for anonymity. I understand.

But now, for change to happen, it is time for the voices of good to speak louder, to scream louder than the voices of evil. And it is time for justice to be served, fully and without compromise. For Morocco and for all of us.

“Time is always right to do what is right!” – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

What most do not know is that the theft of my parents’ inheritance was not limited to the house and its belongings, and the national real estate registries were not the only ones he corrupted. I will cover that soon.

Years ago, on the advice of a notary, my parents had established a civil real estate company, ASKA, the first two letters of Asma and Karim, my deceased brother’s name, and transferred the house to the corporation. My mother held 95 percent of the shares, my father 5 percent. It was designed to ensure my mother would inherit everything after my father’s passing, and that I would inherit it from her in turn.

Before her death, as part of organizing the family’s affairs, Mom sold two parcels of land my father had owned in the Rabat area, used part of the proceeds to pay off the remaining debt on the house, and secured a clear title from the bank. She called me proudly the day she received it and told me she had placed it in her safe for me, just in case. A thousand times, she spoke about the will she had written, making sure the house and all its contents would pass to me, and that I would have access to her bank accounts. A thousand times, I pushed back. I didn’t want to talk about the “after.”

I was stunned when both Elkabous and his so-called attorney insisted I dissolve ASKA before I had even returned to the United States to renew my Moroccan ID card. The same two individuals who had explained to me that I couldn’t access any of my inherited property without the ID card were now trying to convince me to dismantle a company my father had created without needing the same identification. That made no sense. I was certain my father had received sound legal advice when he established ASKA. I refused.

Shortly after, I returned to the U.S. and began the process of renewing my ID card. I remember the staff of the Moroccan consulate in New York being so supportive and kind. They had heard about my mother’s killing. The consul himself stepped out of his office to comfort me and hug my daughters.

I did not return to Casablanca immediately. The pain of losing my mom so suddenly and violently, the way she died, her missed trip (we were preparing to welcome her just days later), the paltry sentence her killer received, the thought of going to the house we had owned since 1972 without either of my parents there. It was all unbearable. Then COVID hit. Then came family medical issues in the U.S. And some time passed.

During that time, Soufiane Elkabous stayed in touch. He repeated his earlier apology a couple of times and said it would never happen again. He told me he understood my devastation after the loss of my mother and assured me he was looking after the house. He said someone came to clean it on a semi-regular basis, but that he was always there when they did. He asked for my permission to stop by from time to time, “just to reflect,” he said. I agreed, on the express condition that he not change anything in the house. He agreed.

He acknowledged that he knew and understood the house was always going to be mine and often repeated that everything would be ready for the transfer when I returned. He said there was nothing to worry about despite the delays. We also agreed that I would reimburse him for any cleaning expenses he had covered, after I accessed the funds in the bank accounts.

He offered to arrange a meeting with the Adouls, whom he said he knew, even though my mother had told me clearly her will was with her notary. Elkabous insisted the Adouls route would be faster and more efficient, and said I should return to Morocco alone, “just the first time,” “just until the title was transferred.” After that, he said, the rest of my family could join. I didn’t know it then, but he wanted me to be and to feel alone in Morocco for what he had planned.

Eventually, once COVID restrictions lifted and health concerns were addressed in the U.S., I called the notary directly. She confirmed that she still had the will and that it was secure in her possession, but stated she was about to leave on an extended trip for a few months. She asked me to delay my trip to Morocco until her return and assured me the additional wait would have no impact. We would handle all inheritance matters at once when she got back. This was November 2023.

I informed Elkabous that I was planning to return to Morocco in the spring to visit my parents’ and brother’s graves, complete the succession, and take possession of the house. As he had before, he assured me he would organize everything: the meetings, the title transfer, the reading of the will.

I would sleep at my cousin’s place the first night, since I couldn’t sleep alone in my parents’ empty home. They were figuring it out. My daughters were not with me. A friend was going to join me later and stay at the house with me.

I had no idea how far from reality those reassurances would turn out to be.