A Higher Committee for Revenue headed by Al-Zubaidi... An open battle against the war mafia
English - Tuesday 16 August 2022 الساعة 09:06 am
Aden, NewsYemen, special:
The announcement by the Chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council about the formation of a higher committee to inventory and manage resources headed by Council member Aidarous Al-Zubaidi, sparked wide interaction and reactions about the importance of controlling the revenue file in the liberated areas, which suffer from widespread looting under the conditions of the war.
In late July, the Presidential Leadership Council announced, during its meeting, a discussion of a proposal to form a higher committee for sovereign and local revenues, concerned with adopting the state's revenue vision and enabling it to manage all its resources.
During his meeting, on Saturday, with the Presidency of the House of Representatives and heads of blocs, Al-Alimi revealed a decision of the Council to form the committee headed by Council member Aidarous Al-Zubaidi and the membership of each of the members: Abu Zara’a Al-Muharrami, Sultan Al-Arada, Othman Majali, Abdullah Al-Alimi.
Al-Alimi confirmed that the committee is fully authorized to deal with the revenue file and to raise any proposals to collect local and central revenues and develop its collection, and to raise the names of any civilian or military leaders who obstruct this to take appropriate measures against them.
This decision was widely praised by Yemenis on social media, while economists stressed the importance of this step to accelerate the arrival of the support announced by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, including the deposit to the Central Bank following the formation of the Presidential Leadership Council.
Economic journalist Majed Al-Daari said in a post on "Facebook" that the step of forming the committee comes to create the atmosphere to absorb that deposit within the framework of a comprehensive national economic reform program.
He added that this aims to correct the state's finances and institutions, fight corruption, activate the control and accounting bodies, and collect all the state's resources and from its various customs, tax and production revenue institutions, including oil and gas.
On the contrary, the step of forming the committee met with angry reactions from the Brotherhood through its activists and media, including the newspaper "Akhbar Al-Youm" affiliated with General Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar, which launched a violent attack against the Chairman of the Leadership Council through reports and articles by Brotherhood writers.
The newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Saif Al-Hadiri, attacked Al-Alimi on his Facebook page and said that he “granted Al-Zubaidi the administration and rule of a homeland by fully enabling him to manage the state’s resources and the right of collection in all state facilities and its land, sea and air outlets,” claiming that this is “a system invented by Al-Alimi Rashad that we did not find.” In any country in the world, there is a system outside the constitution and the law.”
This Brotherhood attack was considered by activists and journalists as an indication of the strength of the battle that the committee will wage to extract resources from powerful leaders in the army and the state, most of whom are loyal to the Brotherhood, taking advantage of the war conditions.
Journalist Sayyaf Al-Gharbani referred in a publication to what he called "the Brotherhood's screaming party against the leadership council," and said that it was due to "the group's desperation at the risk of losing the ability to steal jobs and loot resources."
While journalist Muhammad Saeed al-Sharabi believes that the appointment of Aidarous al-Zubaidi as head of the Committee for the Collection and Protection of Resources means the existence of a bone-breaking battle plan with the corruption mafia that has presided over the past years, commenting: This decision is more important and deeper than changing a military leader or governor.
This proposal is supported by activist Naef Tuaman, who said that the decision to appoint Major General Aidarous Al-Zubaidi as head of the Resources Committee would have a stronger impact and his reaction would be stronger than the military action.
He added, "The head of the Resources Committee means confronting the corruption mafia face to face, which has gone too far in its corruption and in stealing people's livelihood. We hope the committee will review every small and big of state revenues."
In a previous statement to Prime Minister Maeen Abdul-Malik, he revealed that 80% of the revenues of the liberated areas are not supplied to the government due to corruption, which reflects the size of the challenges facing the Resources Committee in extracting billions of riyals in revenues and collecting them to the Central Bank in Aden.
