Ali Haddad, once Algeria’s most powerful private construction magnate, saw his billion-euro empire collapse in a single night at a border checkpoint in 2019—ending a three-decade reign built on political connections, massive infrastructure contracts, and luxury hotel acquisitions in Spain.
Haddad, 54 at the time, was arrested in the early hours of March 31, 2019, at the Algeria-Tunisia border carrying two valid passports and foreign currency. Hours later, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika—his longtime political patron—fell from power. Haddad never recovered.
Born in 1965 in Kabylie, Haddad co-founded ETRHB with his five brothers in 1988. By 2015, the firm was Algeria’s largest private construction company, with assets nearing €1 billion and annual profits exceeding $150 million. He expanded into media, vehicle distribution, football club USM Alger, and—most notably—Barcelona’s luxury hotel scene, acquiring El Palace Barcelona, Hotel Miramar, and Gran Hotel La Florida for over €67 million.
Serving as president of Algeria’s most influential employers’ organization (FCE), Haddad wielded extraordinary influence. In 2017, then-US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson even gifted him a historic US-Algeria treaty.
But prosecutors revealed ETRHB had amassed over €700 million in bank credits and won €7 billion in public contracts—largely bypassing competitive tenders. In July 2020, Haddad was sentenced to 18 years for squandering state funds and illegally obtaining privileges, later reduced to 12 years on appeal. Additional convictions followed in 2021 and 2022.
By 2025, the state had seized all ETRHB assets and subsidiaries, including the Barcelona hotels, transferred officially to Algeria’s National Investment Fund in August 2025. Haddad now serves his sentence at Tazoult prison, his estimated $300 million fortune wiped out.
“One night at a border crossing ended everything.”
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