According to the eviction notice issued by the Benslimane Provincial Directorate of Equipment, Transport and Logistics, the owners of villas in Bouznika Bay are classified as mere “land users” who built on the plots without title deeds.
In the letter seen by Le360, the provincial director recalls that his department suspended the operating permits for the villas in question in 2014. He now threatens to swiftly launch “all the administrative, legal and judicial procedures necessary against them, including the evacuation of the premises by the public authorities, in accordance with the laws governing the protection of the public domain.”
The Bouznika Plage Association, for its part, confirmed that its members had just received the notice. In a statement, it said notices issued by the provincial directorate “were served by a court bailiff on numerous residents of Bouznika Plage, ordering them to vacate the plots on which their seaside residences stand and return them empty, to their original state.”
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According to the association, however, the findings of an expert assessment had established “as a matter of law that all the beach huts on Bouznika beach are located on land titles belonging to the State’s private domain, and not on the maritime public domain.”
The association added that the provincial directorate later commissioned “a study aimed at following the empirical boundary established under the agreement reached in the 1990s between the private real estate company Capri and the Ministry of Equipment — a boundary that is not based on the actual application of the Dahir and the relevant regulations governing the delimitation of the maritime public domain.”
The occupants of the plots — all former senior state officials — were granted permission more than three decades ago to settle on the parcels overlooking the bay.
Unconfirmed reports now suggest that the land cleared after the demolition of the structures targeted by the eviction notices could potentially be sold to foreign investors.
The case remains ongoing.
