News of a trade deal between Algerian company and Israel

A press report issued in Algiers on Wednesday said that a private Algerian company could export the remains of copper and Aluminum to Israel via Cyprus.

The Algerian daily " al-Khabar" quoted traders from " Dubai" quarters of al-Olmeh municipality of Steif province, to the East of Algeria, saying that the said deal was actually made several weeks ago through the port of the capital Algiers. The traders stressed that this deal was not the first and expected not to be the last.

The paper added in a report about the scandals of the foreign policy and the various ways of smuggling that the scandal of exporting copper and Aluminum to Israel is the most recent in the series of scandals that shake the foreign trade sector in Algeria for many years. The paper mentioned that the private Algerian company " SNC" which is run by Jordanians of Palestinian origin was in May this year to export a telephone exchange to Israel and this telephone exchange center include precious metals that of which after treatment and melting amounts of gold and diamond can be extracted.

However, this operation and other similar ones come to shake the foreign trade sector after the decision taken by the Algerian government in 1994 to lift the state's monopoly to the trade sector, in the context of the policy pursued to encourage foreign exports apart from the fuel sector.

Due to the fact that foreign trade operation is not organized in Algeria, several suspected trade operations took place. A matter which forces the Algerian customs department to freeze the exportation of steel and iron remains for one month in the beginning of this year, due to the fact that an amount of a cost of ( USD 65 million) was exported illegally and that customs sources said that the value of the deal was put in foreign bank accounts.

The Algerian street accuses the army generals of taking part in the deals of smuggling and cheating.