Like studies written to be forgotten and money spent to vanish.
Across the shelves of public institutions lie countless reports that cost the state billions, yet never served a single purpose. This isn’t just bureaucratic neglect — it is the quiet face of a disguised institutional rent, an entire system where waste wears the mask of “knowledge” and “expertise”.
The recent move by the General Inspectorate of Finance is telling.
When the state begins auditing “phantom studies” worth billions, it signals that something deep within the governance of public funds is cracking.
This is not about a few irregularities — it is about a culture where spending replaces achievement, and documents replace results.
How many studies have been repeated, funded, and shelved over and over again?
The real question isn’t how much they cost — it’s why they were ever commissioned.
Was it for insight, or simply for the invoice?
This phenomenon exposes more than financial misconduct; it reflects a distorted administrative mindset, where outsourcing replaces internal expertise and “consulting” becomes a coded language for redistribution of public money.
Behind the polished façade of professionalism often hides a network of mutual favors linking officials to consulting firms, turning the public budget into a playground for the privileged few.
Even more alarming, auditors uncovered plagiarized studies — academic works by Moroccan researchers recycled into “paid reports” without their consent.
Knowledge, stripped of ethics, became a commodity; intellectual effort was monetized into a market of fake expertise.
But the pressing question remains:
Where was accountability all this time?
How could billions be spent without a single alarm being raised?
Are we witnessing isolated misconduct — or a systemic silence embedded within the machinery of governance?
This is not just a financial scandal. It is a moral test for the state’s capacity to hold itself accountable.
The audit’s outcome will matter only if its findings are made public — because corruption thrives in opacity, and transparency is its only antidote.
Ultimately, Morocco faces not just a crisis of management, but a crisis of conscience.
When billions are spent on studies no one reads, and consulting contracts turn into a form of legalized waste, the issue is no longer financial — it’s ethical and cultural.
So the question lingers:
Will Morocco finally confront this era of disguised rent?
Or will we keep stacking studies on the shelves, while billions quietly evaporate?
