The liquidators of the huge business empire of Tunisia's deposed dictator have threatened to quit en masse over security concerns, the official TAP news agency reported Wednesday. Mohammed Neji Hergli, who heads the Tunisian accountants guild, said the 200-odd liquidators tasked with managing the myriad firms owned by Zine el Abidine Ben Ali and his entourage could walk out by year's end.
"We will have to collectively resign if the security conditions are not improved," he told reporters, saying the liquidators were being routinely harassed, both verbally and physically. "Ben Ali and his relatives are gone but their associates are still around, they have interests to protect and they are constantly sabotaging our work," Wajih Abdelhedi, one of the liquidators, said at a press conference.
After Ben Ali was forced into exile in January by an unprecedented popular uprising, some 200 flourishing businesses owned by him and his clan were confiscated and handed over to liquidators. The companies - which include banks, insurance companies and car dealerships - are worth an estimated 2.5 billion euros ($3.3 billion) and employ close to 20,000 people. "Liquidators are being verbally attacked, they are being sued by the former owners' lawyers... Nobody is defending us, there is no government and we are not part of the administration," he said.
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