Tunisa sell off ex-dictator’s luxury cars

 

THE luxury car collection of Tunisian former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali went on pre-auction display this week in Tunis, more than three years after his ouster.

Sixteen of the 39 cars, seized by authorities after Ben Ali was ousted in January 2011 in the first of the Arab Spring revolutions, were shown off at a casino on Wednesday and Thursday in the suburb of Gammarth. Thirteen other vehicles were displayed in a barracks.

The collection, which has yet to be valued, includes a Porsche, a Cadillac and a top-of-the-range Mercedes.

“Every member of the Ben Ali family owned between four and six cars,” Mohamed Lassaad Hmaied, director of Cruise Tour, the company mandated by the government to sell the vehicles, told DPA.

One of the factors that drove Tunisians into the street in protest was the way Ben Ali’s family used his 23 years in power to amass fabulous wealth.

Among Ben Ali’s wheels was a 1962 super-luxury Maybach, Germany’s equivalent of a Rolls-Royce. That car is to be left off the auction catalogue. The culture ministry has asked it be parked in the Museum of National Memory for posterity.

Would-be buyers have until May 21 to register for the sale, the proceeds of which will be paid into a account used to settle the former regime’s debts.

Tunisia’s cash-strapped technocratic government is hoping to raise millions of euros.

Source http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/tunisian-ex-dictators-luxury-cars-on-sale/story-fn3dxix6-1226920208093