In September 2026, the streets of Rabuni and Chahid El Hafed, in the Tinduf camps in the Algerian Sahara, stopped talking only about survival. Hundreds of investors, traders, and families demanded the return of funds they had entrusted to Infravest for Contracting and Investment, a company that had managed to build an appearance of solvency and respectability for several years. Its director, Sallamu Abba Ali —also cited as Salamo Abaali— disappeared when claims began to multiply. Local estimates place the money involved at around 886 trillion Algerian dinars, about 6.6 million dollars, although the figures are still pending an independent audit.
The existing reports mention 3,420 contracts and 2,841 investors. Another reconstruction published later estimates the amounts that would have been raised at 648.58 trillion Algerian dinars, plus 532 million Mauritanian ouguiyas. These figures come from local sources and need to be verified.
The significance of the case does not lie solely in the eventual magnitude of the scam. Infravest raises a much more uncomfortable question: how could a massive fundraising structure operate for years in a community subjected to a subsistence economy, without the political and administrative authorities controlling the camps detecting, preventing, or investigating its operations.
The anatomy of a Ponzi scheme
A Ponzi scheme is named after Charles Ponzi, the Italian-American swindler who popularized a model based on a simple premise: to offer investors extraordinary returns that do not come from a profitable economic activity, but from the money contributed by new participants.
The initial appearance is fundamental. The first investors may effectively receive their returns. But these payments do not prove that there is a profitable company: they simply serve to consolidate trust and attract more capital. As long as the flow of new contributors is sufficient, the mechanism can be maintained. When the number of new investors decreases or a large number of contracts simultaneously reach their maturity, the structure runs out of liquidity and collapses.
This pattern is precisely what the available information attributes to Infravest. The company would have begun by building a legitimate image through contracting activities and construction, community initiatives, and charitable actions. It would later have offered investments with extraordinary monthly returns, which, according to the material provided, reached between 50% and 70%. The money from new participants would have allowed for the promised payments to previous investors.
The simultaneous arrival of hundreds of maturities would have ultimately broken the mechanism. Buda Mustafa's analysis points to 780 contracts that would have reached maturity, more than 22% of the total registered. If this information is confirmed documentarily, it would constitute precisely the type of liquidity crisis characteristic of a Ponzi scheme: when the payment obligations exceed the ability to attract new money, the financial architecture stops functioning.
Abba Ali's disappearance further exacerbated the confusion. The company initially issued a statement saying that the director was out of the country for travel reasons and asked investors for patience. But the subsequent disappearance of the businessman turned the financial problem into a political and social crisis.
The mystery of the six million dollars
However, there is one question that precedes even Infravest's criminal responsibility: where did the money come from?
The Tinduf camps are located in one of the most arid and difficult areas of North Africa. The local population relies heavily on international aid to meet basic needs. Human Rights Watch already described the camps as remote settlements in the Algerian desert whose population mainly depended on international aid for their essential needs.
The European Commission's own documentation indicates that Sahrawi residents continue to rely on humanitarian assistance and that European aid is channeled through international organizations and specialized NGOs.
From this arises the paradox of Infravest. It is extraordinarily striking that a community whose formal economy is severely limited by the geographical environment, the camp regime, and its dependence on international assistance could mobilize several million dollars for a private financial operation.
This does not itself prove that the money came from illicit activities. It would be irresponsible to turn an economic anomaly into a criminal accusation without a financial investigation. But it does justify an investigation into the origins of the capital. Among the hypotheses that should be examined are cross-border smuggling networks, drug trafficking, illegal trade in fuel and cigarettes, clandestine mining, and the potential diversion and subsequent commercialization of humanitarian aid products.
The historical existence of informal markets linked to cross-border routes in the desert is documented. Human Rights Watch, for example, recorded incidents in previous years related to the transport of fuel and alleged smuggling activities near the border with Mauritania.
But a hypothesis about the origin of the funds can only become a fact when a financial investigation reconstructs the operations. That should be one of the central objectives of any investigation into Infravest: to determine who delivered the money, in what amounts, where it came from, where it was deposited, what intermediaries were involved, and to which destinations it was ultimately transferred.
The precedent of humanitarian aid
The issue takes on even greater dimension when recalling the precedent of the investigation by the European Anti-Fraud Office, OLAF.
In 2003, the European Commission received complaints about possible diversions of aid intended for Tinduf residents and requested an investigation by OLAF. The investigation was conducted between 2003 and 2007, and its report was made public years later. The European Parliament noted that the document had identified significant problems related to the management and distribution of food aid.
The European Commission responded that the findings of the investigation had revealed weaknesses in the logistics chain of aid and that, from then on, controls had been strengthened, including monitoring distribution, audits, and increased presence of international organizations. The Commission also stated that, since the implementation of those measures, it had not found new evidence of diversion of aid funded by ECHO.
This is an important clarification. The OLAF report cannot be legitimately used as automatic proof that all subsequent aid has been diverted or that any economic activity developed decades later is the result of that diversion. But it does constitute a relevant institutional precedent that requires special attention to be paid to any new financial circuit that arises around the camps.
A structure that could hardly go unnoticed
The most delicate political issue is the responsibility of the authorities that administer the camps. Human Rights Watch has pointed out that, with the acquiescence of the Algerian authorities, the Polisario Front administers the camps near Tinduf.
Infravest does not seem to have been a clandestine operation developed over a few weeks. According to the material provided, it physically operated from 2022, maintained offices, carried out contracting activities, built a public reputation, and raised capital for several years.
Thus, it is hard to imagine that an operation of such scale could develop completely outside local power structures. This circumstance justifies investigating what authorizations the company obtained, which officials were aware of its activities, what administrative controls existed, what institutions allowed its operation, and whether there were financial or personal relationships between its managers and members of the Polisario Front apparatus or Algerian officials.
There is an institutional question of enormous gravity: how could a company raise millions for years within a space subjected to specific administrative and security structures without those structures intervening?
The victims are not those who should pay the bill
There is another dimension that risks being buried under the scandal. The immediate victims are the refugees themselves.
The file describes traders, public employees, students, and families who would have placed their savings in Infravest attracted by the promise of exceptional returns.
To turn these victims into collective culprits would be an additional injustice. The Sahrawi population of the camps cannot be confused with those who manage their political structures, nor can an entire community be held accountable for the potential criminal behavior of specific individuals.
Precisely for this reason, the Infravest case should serve to separate two realities that often appear mixed: the local population, who continue to live in conditions of dependency and vulnerability, and the power structures that manage the camps.
The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (RASD), a phantom entity proclaimed by the Polisario Front and without international recognition, is part of that political framework, but its existence as a control structure by the separatist movement does not automatically make all local Sahrawis responsible for its decisions.
Money as an x-ray of a system
The Infravest scandal could end up being much more important than the disappearance of a businessman and the loss of several million dollars. It could become an x-ray of the informal economy of the camps and the prevailing corruption among high-ranking Polisario officials.
If the figures are confirmed, there will need to be an explanation of how an economy officially dependent on international aid managed to gather such a volume of private liquidity. It will also be necessary to reconstruct the money circuit and determine whether there were connections with cross-border trade networks.
The OLAF precedent demonstrates that the risks of diversion and irregular commercialization of resources intended for refugees are not a recent invention. The European Union itself modified its procedures precisely to reduce those risks and established monitoring mechanisms that, according to the Commission, had not detected new diversions after their implementation.
Infravest now opens a different chapter: it is no longer just a matter of knowing whether humanitarian goods arrived at their destination, but of discovering where the private capital that allowed for the establishment of a financial operation of millions of dollars in a territory where formal economic opportunities are extremely limited came from.
The answer will also determine the true nature of the scandal. It could be a gigantic private scam exploiting a vulnerable community. It could reveal an informal economy much larger than what official statistics show. Or a judicial and financial investigation could uncover connections with illegal networks of regional scope. These realities could even coexist.
For now, there is one certainty and one question. The certainty is that thousands of people claim to have lost their savings and that Infravest displays, according to available information, numerous features compatible with a Ponzi scheme. The question —much deeper— is where the money was before entering Infravest and where it is now.
In the Tinduf camps, the desert has once again revealed a paradox: behind a community whose international image is that of a population dependent on humanitarian aid, there emerged, for years, a mass of capital sufficient to fuel a gigantic financial operation. Knowing who generated that money, who allowed it to circulate, and who ultimately benefited from it will be essential to distinguish individual fraud from the existence of a broader clandestine and illegal economy. And, above all, to prevent those who are left abandoned once again from being the refugees themselves.
Adalberto Agozino holds a PhD in Political Science, is an International Analyst, and teaches at the University of Buenos Aires.
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