The Makhzen's Double Talk: Here Is Who Really Owns the Newspapers That Lie About Algeria

Nawel Zerhouni — Paris, France — 2026-09-11

On 10 September 2026, the day after the rupture between Algiers and Abu Dhabi, a Moroccan website published an editorial titled "Paranoia at the Summit". The tone was that of a courtroom: Algeria sick, Algeria wandering, Algeria "in a pathetic flight forward". The same day, the Arabic version of the same text spoke of "morbid obsessions" and "imaginary enemies".

We have already answered on the substance, facts in hand. But one question remains that nobody ever asks, and it changes everything: who is speaking, exactly, when this newspaper speaks?

Because if you believe it is Moroccan opinion expressing itself, you are mistaken. And if you believe this is a free press, you are mistaken even more. So let us open the file. It is public, it is documented, and it is damning.

The source: a Reporters Without Borders report

None of what follows comes from us. It comes from the Media Ownership Monitor Morocco, an international research program run by Global Media Registry and carried out with the independent Moroccan outlet Le Desk, as part of Reporters Without Borders' work on media ownership transparency. The report answers a single question: who controls the media? It scrutinized 46 Moroccan media outlets and 38 publishing companies, compiling trade registers, interviews and public data.

A point of honesty, and it matters: the data in this report date from 2017. Positions have changed since — Aziz Akhannouch became head of government in 2021, Moulay Hafid Elalamy left the Ministry of Industry the same year. We flag this because we are not among those who doctor dates. The ownership table itself has never been contradicted.

First file: le360.ma, or the "defamation press"

Let us start with the one that signed the editorial of 10 September.

le360.ma (Moroccan digital newspaper) is owned by a holding company, Edit Holding, whose shareholding is disarmingly simple: Aïcha Bouayad, 80% — Aziz Daki, 20%.

Who is Aïcha Bouayad? According to the report, a former communications director at SGMB, the Société Générale Marocaine de Banques, also known in the art world for her Atelier 21 gallery.

Who is Aziz Daki? A former columnist for the daily Aujourd'hui Le Maroc, and above all the former director of the Mawazine international festival.

And now the file takes on another dimension. Because the Wikipedia encyclopedia, in its French version, documents what many journalists have been writing for years. It describes le360.ma as an "emblematic figure of the defamation press in Morocco", with an editorial line that is "monarchist and ultranationalist". It states that the outlet is "considered a tool in the hands of the Moroccan authorities to attack the journalists behind embarrassing revelations". And it reports that Aziz Daki is described as a close associate of Mounir Majidi, the private secretary of King Mohammed VI.

These are not Algerian accusations. They are quotations, with names attached:

**Serge Michel and Youssef Aït Akdim, journalists at *Le Monde***: le360.ma is an outlet "close to the Moroccan authorities, which regularly attacks the journalists behind embarrassing revelations".
**Vincent Coquaz, journalist at Libération: the "real boss" of le360.ma is Mounir Majidi**, private secretary of Mohammed VI.
**Rosa Moussaoui, senior reporter at L'Humanité: le360.ma's "function is to spread the propaganda of Mohamed VI and the Moroccan services**".
El Confidencial, a Spanish outlet: le360.ma is a "quasi-official newspaper".

So that is the real identity of the pen that, on 10 September 2026, called Algeria's sovereign decision "paranoia". We have nothing to add. The French and Spanish journalists quoted above have said it all.

Second file: the royal family, a press shareholder

The MOM report is categorical: the Moroccan royal family is present in every key sector of the country's economy through its holding company, SNI (Société Nationale d'Investissement), which it owns 100%. In 2010, SNI merged with the group Omnium Nord-Africain (ONA).

And that holding company is present in the media. The report lists the titles and companies in which the royal family appears: Impression Presse Édition and SOREAD, for outlets such as Assabah, L'Économiste, La Nouvelle Tribune, 2M, Radio 2M, Medi1 Radio and Medi 1 TV.

In other words: when a Moroccan daily publishes an article hostile to Algeria, the ultimate shareholder may be, through a cascade of subsidiaries, the royal family itself. This is not an opinion. It is a capital structure — registered, verifiable.

Third file: the ministers who own the newspapers

This is where the report turns brutal. Let us quote it, because no paraphrase will carry the same force:

"Of the eight non-partisan press titles selected for the study, one, Le Matin, has a Saudi billionaire as an investor; four count one or both of the two ministers and billionaires Aziz Akhannouch and Moulay Hafid Elalamy (La Nouvelle Tribune, Aujourd'hui Le Maroc, La Vie Eco, Les Inspirations ECO); the royal holding SNI is present in the capital structure of EcoMedias as well as that of La Nouvelle Tribune; the politician and businessman Khalid El Hariry is the sole owner of the weekly TelQuel."

Let us read that again slowly. Of eight "non-partisan" press titles, four belong to sitting ministers. That is: members of the government owned, at the time of the study, newspapers that were supposed to hold them to account.

The ownership details confirm the mechanism:

Caractères Media Group (which publishes La Vie Eco, Femmes du Maroc, Le Courrier de l'Atlas…) is held 83% by the Akwa group, the conglomerate of Aziz Akhannouch — according to Forbes, the country's second fortune outside the royal family —, 10% by Attijari Capital Risk, a subsidiary of Attijariwafa Bank, itself tied to the royal holding SNI, and 2% by Moulay Hafid Elalamy, then Minister of Industry.
Aujourd'hui Le Maroc is published by ALM Publishing, which belongs to the Caractères group — hence, ultimately, to Minister Akhannouch and the royal holding. Its founder, Khalid Hachimi Idrissi, today heads MAP, the official news agency of the Moroccan state.
La Nouvelle Tribune: Fahd Yata 21%, his wife Afifa Dassouli 21%, then Akwa 8%, SNI 8% via Wafa Assurances, SNI 8% via the company Ohio, and 8% via BMCE, of Othmane Benjelloun's FinanceCom group.
Le Matin, born in 1972 out of the nationalization of the French group MAS, was founded by Moulay Ahmed Alaoui — a cousin of King Hassan II and a minister several times between 1981 and 1998. The report describes it plainly as "the unofficial media outlet of the State", whose sales are explained by the massive subscriptions of official institutions.
EcoMedias (Assabah, L'Économiste), run by the Dilami couple, counts the royal holding SNI among its shareholders.
L'Opinion is published by the company Istiqlal — that is, by a political party.

Fourth file: the digital press, born to "hold the ground"

And now the most important passage in the report — the one every Algerian should read.

The MOM devotes an entire study to what it calls, in French, "the great replacement": the rise of the Arabic-language digital press. In it, it describes the arrival on the market of "new media outlets steeped in sensationalism, fake news and state propaganda".

Then comes this sentence, which must be quoted in full:

"To control the profusion of the online press, which was first invested by professional journalists who had taken to the Internet after the political and economic pressures (censorship, judicial harassment, advertising boycott…) suffered by their newspapers, the security fringe of the State itself encouraged the creation of new media outlets to hold the fallow ground and shape a public opinion increasingly addicted to the Internet."

We are not the ones writing this. It is a research report backed by Reporters Without Borders. It says, in black and white, that press organs were created at the instigation of the security apparatus to hold the digital space. And it says what they are for: sensationalism, false information, propaganda.

That is, very precisely, the status of most of the articles we hit back at every week.

Fifth file: advertising as a weapon

One mechanism remains, the quietest and the most effective: money.

The report describes an advertising market that is "opaque", with no regulatory mechanism, where a newspaper's survival depends on the goodwill of a small number of advertisers — telecoms, banks and agribusiness accounting for 44% of the $386 million invested in 2016.

And it names the victims: publications that were "popular nonetheless" were boycotted — TelQuel, Nichane, Le Journal Hebdo, in the 2000s. Let us translate that: in Morocco, a newspaper that displeases loses its advertisers and dies. Those that survive are the ones that do not displease.

The report adds a clinical observation on the editorial line of these titles: "Every editorial line, with the exception of Telquel's, tends to focus on economic subjects, to adopt a smooth tone rather than question or even contradict the economic, political and social order."

A "smooth tone". Except when it comes to Algeria. There — and there only — the tone turns brutal, insulting, psychiatric. This paradox deserves a moment's thought: newspapers with a smooth editorial line toward their own power turn ferocious toward the neighbor.

And to be honest: those who are not part of this system

We will not say that the entire Moroccan press takes orders, because that would be false — and because it is precisely by being precise that one is credible.

The report establishes clearly that some digital outlets belong to their founders, and to no one else:

hespress.com (Moroccan digital newspaper), created in 2007 by brothers Hassan and Amin El Guennouni, is held 100% by them, through their company MarocAds. No minister, no royal holding in the capital.
yabiladi.com, owned 100% by its founder Mohamed Ezzouak, through the company Web Stratégie.
h24.info, held 80% by Mohamed Laraki, through Geomedia.
medias24.com, published by Société des Nouveaux Médias — although it should be noted that its co-founder Hicham Senoussi was a mission officer attached to the Royal Cabinet in the 1990s, then managing director of the Le Matin group.
le1.ma, launched in 2016 by Nawfal Laarabi and Abdellah El Hattach — noting that Nawfal Laarabi was campaign director for the businessman Moncef Belkhayat and, before that, head of corporate communications and public relations for the ONA group, the royal holding.

These clarifications do not weaken us: they arm us. Because they show that we have read, verified, and that we distinguish. It is not "Moroccans" we are targeting. It is an apparatus.

What this file demonstrates

Let us gather the pieces.

When le360.ma calls Algeria "paranoid": that newspaper is 80% owned by a former bank communications director and 20% by a man described by Libération as a front man for the king's private secretary.

When Aujourd'hui Le Maroc publishes an attack: it belongs to the group of a minister, and it was founded by the man who today heads the State's official news agency.

When Assabah, L'Économiste or La Nouvelle Tribune takes on Algiers: the royal family's holding company appears in their capital.

When a hostile digital news site appears: the Reporters Without Borders report indicates that the security apparatus encouraged the creation of these outlets to "hold the ground" with "sensationalism, fake news and state propaganda".

And when one of these newspapers decides to be genuinely independent: it loses its advertisers and disappears.

That is the double talk. On one side, Rabat presents itself to the world as a modern democracy with a free and pluralistic press. On the other, the press that talks about Algeria is owned by the palace, its ministers and its businessmen — when it was not created, according to the report, at the instigation of the security apparatus.

So a conclusion imposes itself, and it holds for every article we have been hitting back at for months.

When these newspapers insult Algeria, it is not the voice of the Moroccan people that we hear. The Moroccan people were never consulted. What we hear is the voice of an apparatus speaking through its own instruments, and wanting us to believe that this is a debate of opinion.

As for us, we make no mistake about the voice. We know who is speaking. And we know whom we are answering.