Algerian authorities have charged eight people in the case of Omar bin Omran, who was abducted as a teenager more than 25 years ago and discovered this week in a cellar only a few hundred metres from his family home.
According to a statement from Algeria’s Judicial Council, six of the suspects have been detained and two others placed under judicial supervision, meaning they can remain free while facing trial.
“A judicial investigation has been opened against the main suspect for the crime of kidnapping and luring a person, detaining a person without an order from the competent authorities and outside the cases permitted by the law, as well as human trafficking of a victim in a status of vulnerability,” the council said.
The secondary suspects in the case were charged with abetting a crime by concealing the place where Mr bin Omran was held captive and not informing authorities.
Mr bin Omran, from the town of El Guedid in Djelfa governorate in northern Algeria, was 16 when he went missing. His family searched for him for years across the country, a relative told The National, before they eventually lost hope and assumed he had fallen victim to the political violence of the time.
“Omar disappeared in 1998 in very mysterious circumstances and in a period when Algeria was going through a difficult security situation,” his cousin Khaled Rgueb said.
“All of his relatives kept looking for him for years and searched every potential place where he could be from the north to the south of the country.
“They even attended television shows to appeal to people who might have seen him, but they eventually gave up and assumed he was dead and buried at an unknown location.”
Algeria was torn by an armed conflict between the government and several Islamist militant groups between 1992 and 2002, commonly referred to as the “Black Decade”. Almost 200,000 people were killed, and about 15,000 went missing.
All hopes of finding Mr bin Omar had long faded when the sister of neighbour, who was reportedly going through an inheritance dispute with her brother, hinted at his whereabouts in a social media post.
Local police took out a search warrant and raided the neighbour's house the next day.
“They found him in a stable, where the suspect keeps his sheep, [the cellar trapdoor] covered in hay, and he was thankfully saved,” Mr Rgueb said.
A video circulating on social media shows Mr bin Omar with a long beard, shivering, and with a blank look on his face as he is discovered in a small cellar concealed under bales of hay.
Mr Rgueb said his cousin had appeared to be “in good shape” when he saw him at the local hospital where authorities sent him for treatment.
“He is currently getting help and has been receiving medical care, both physical and psychological,” he said.
“He was able to speak to me and recognise me, his situation is not critical or bad. He is in good shape but he is currently receiving help to reintegrate into society and overcome what he went through.”
Mr bin Omran reportedly told family members that he used to see them passing from the stable window and learn of all their news, even his mother’s death in 2007, but was unable to call for help because he was “under some sort of black magic spell” cast by his alleged abductor.
Earlier it was reported that the 61-year-old owner of the house where Mr bin Omran was found has been detained by police. Officials said the “perpetrator of this heinous crime” will be punished severely.
The detained man was also reportedly accused of poisoning Mr bin Omran’s dog, which had pined around the suspect’s house for a month after the teenager vanished.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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United States
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China
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UAE
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Japan
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Norway
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Canada
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Singapore
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Australia
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Saudi Arabia
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South Korea
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