On Monday, the Casablanca Commercial Court renewed permission to continue the activity of the “Samir” company for an additional 3 months, hoping to find a solution for the refinery, which has been inactive for years.
The permission to continue the activity allows the validity of current contracts, including employment contracts, with the aim of continuing to seek to sell the company’s assets in order to preserve employment for official workers and handlers, and for the interests of creditors, led by the state in the person of the Customs and Indirect Taxes Administration.
The company, which owns an oil refinery in Muhammadiyah and large storage capacities for petroleum materials, not to mention contributions in subsidiary companies, has been facing the judicial liquidation process since 2016, after accumulating its debts during the era of the two previous managers to more than 40 billion dirhams.
Since 2016, the Commercial Court has issued permission to continue the activity of Samir Company every three months, based on Article 652 of the Trade Code, which states that if the continuation of the activity of the contracting subject to judicial liquidation is required by the public interest or the interest of creditors, the court may authorize the continuation of its activity automatically or A request submitted by the “Sendik” or the representative of the king.
In parallel, the Unified Trade Union Office of the Democratic Confederation for Employment in the Samir Company renewed the demand to return to oil refining at the Muhammadiyah refinery by removing the obstacles facing judicial waiver from within the judicial procedure with regard to sales guarantees.
The same trade union office said, in a press release, that “returning to oil refining in the refinery is possible by encouraging investments in petroleum refining, especially after the adoption of the new investment law and the activation of the Mohammed VI Investment Fund,” which is the fund that is betting on to invest in strategic sectors. .
And in relation to the lease of its tanks to the billionaire Reda Benbrahim company, Samir’s workers “expressed their reservations about allowing storage for the benefit of only one actor.”
The Unified Trade Union Office of the Democratic Confederation of Labor in Samir called for “opening the field, according to requests for bids, and with full transparency, for all actors to store in Samir Company in order to raise the national stocks and seize the opportunity for cuts in Russian gas whose trade is not prohibited in Morocco, and to push towards breaking the land and sea understandings.” And lower prices for the benefit of consumers, young and old.
Samir’s tanks were supposed to be rented by the state at the height of need when the oil price was at its lowest level, but despite the issuance of a judicial decision allowing this, the lease contract was not signed, until the billionaire Ben Ibrahim’s company submitted a request for rent and obtained it easily, and proceeded Recently, the import of Russian gas to the port of Muhammadiyah.
And with the long wait for a solution, the crisis of the company’s workers worsens, as since it stopped working, they receive less than 40 percent wages, not to mention the payment of retirement contributions, which was condemned by their trade union office and held the responsibility for “the syndicate charged with judicial liquidation and the Commercial Court for undermining the conditions of Social peace in the company and the attempt to confuse the arrangement between the acquired rights of workers and the interests of creditors who bear the responsibility of arbitrary assignment to the company until its accounts are irreversibly disrupted.
The Commercial Court in Casablanca had received offers to buy the Samir refinery last February, but the settlement has not been made yet, which further deepens the crisis of the only refinery that Morocco has at a time when the refining industry has become more important and its profit margins are greater.