Mohammed VI of Morocco

Mohammed was born on 21 August 1963, as the first child and eldest son of King Hassan II and his wife, Lalla Latifa. His father was keen on giving him a religious and political education from an early age; at the age of four, he started attending the Quranic school at the Royal Palace. His educational routine commenced at 6 am with an hour-long recitation of the Quran, followed by formal lessons. He completed his first primary and secondary studies at the Collège Royal, a specialized college constructed within the fortified walls of the palace. Hassan II, desiring his son to experience competitive pressure, selected twelve classmates recognized for their intellect to accompany Mohammed in his studies. As depicted in Le Roi prédateur, a 2012 biography authored by two French journalists, there is an account of Hassan instructing his aides to administer twenty lashes to Mohammed when he appeared to lag in his studies. Mohammed's education was supervised by Mohammed Aouad, a diplomat and professor who later became a minister in the government, and assisted by Moroccan and European governesses. Mohammed excelled in languages.

Mohammed's first public engagement was in 1971, when, at the age of eight, he received United States Vice President Spiro Agnew at the Royal Palace in Rabat. At the age of ten, he represented his father at the funeral of French president Georges Pompidou in 1974.

Mohammed attained his Baccalaureate in 1981, before gaining a bachelor's degree in law at the Mohammed V University at Agdal in 1985. His research paper dealt with "the Arab-African Union and the Strategy of the Kingdom of Morocco in matters of International Relations". He was furthermore appointed president of the Pan Arab Games, and was commissioned a Brigadier General of the Royal Moroccan Army on 26 November 1985. Mohammed served as the Coordinator of the Offices and Services of the Royal Armed Forces until 1994.

In 1987, Mohammed obtained his first Certificat d'Études Supérieures (CES) in political sciences, and in July 1988 he obtained a Diplôme d'Études Approfondies (DEA) in public law. In November 1988, he trained in Brussels with Jacques Delors, the President of the European Commission.

According to a biography by Ferran Sales Aige, Mohammed's father received reports from his spies indicating that the young prince was visiting bars regularly. This led to a deepening dissatisfaction from the king towards his son. In a moment of despair, Hassan II was rumoured to have described his son's behaviour as a "chromosome error." Mohammed was sent to study law in Nice, with his activities closely monitored by the interior minister dispatched by his father. He obtained his PhD in law with distinction on 29 October 1993 from the French University of Nice Sophia Antipolis for his thesis on "EEC-Maghreb Relations". On 12 July 1994, he was promoted to the military rank of Major General, and that same year he became president of the High Council of Culture and Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Moroccan Army.

According to the New York Times, before ascending to the throne, Mohammed "gained a reputation as a playboy during the years he spent waiting in the wings, showing a fondness for fast cars and nightclubs." According to a childhood friend, Mohammed harboured fantasies about the world beyond the palace walls and seldom ventured outside. One of his favourite songs was "Breakfast in America" by the English rock band Supertramp, which celebrates the allure of travel by jumbo jet. Over time, a noticeable estrangement developed between him and his father. He actively avoided encounters with Hassan II, even during his visits to Morocco. Instead, he frequently frequented Amnesia, an illicit club located underground in Rabat. According to Le Roi prédateur, Mohammed's close friend from school, Fouad Ali El Himma, facilitated his visits to Amnesia by installing a private lift from his apartment above that descended directly to the club's premises.

Business and wealth

Mohammed is Morocco's leading businessman and banker. In 2015, he was estimated by Forbes magazine to be worth US$5.7 billion although in 2019 Business Insider quoted US$2.1 billion. The Moroccan Royal Family, meanwhile, has one of the largest fortunes in the world. Together, they hold the majority stakes in the Al Mada holding, formerly named the Société Nationale d'Investissement (SNI), which was originally state-owned but was merged in 2013 with Omnium Nord Africain (ONA Group), to form a single holding company that was taken off the Casablanca Stock Exchange—resulting in the scrapping of an equivalent of 50 billion dirhams marketcap (~US$6 billion). Al Mada has a diverse portfolio consisting of many important businesses in Morocco, operating in various sectors including: Attijariwafa Bank (banking), Managem (mining), Onapar, SOMED (tourism/real-estate and exclusive distributor of Maserati), Wafa Assurance (insurance), Marjane (hypermarket chain), Wana-Inwi (telecommunications), SONASID (siderurgy), Lafarge Maroc, Sopriam (exclusive distributor of Peugeot-Citroën in Morocco), Renault Maroc (exclusive distributor of Renault in Morocco) and Nareva (energy). It also owns many food-processing companies and is currently in the process of disengaging from this sector. Between mid-2012 and 2013, the holding sold Lessieur, Centrale Laitière, Bimo and Cosumar to foreign groups for a total amount of ~$1.37 billion (11.4 billion Dirhams including 9.7 billion in 2013 and 1.7 in 2012).

SNI and ONA both owned stakes in Brasseries du Maroc, the largest alcoholic beverage manufacturer and distributor of brands such as Heineken in the country. In March 2018, the SNI adopted its current name, Al Mada.

Mohammed is also a leading agricultural producer and land owner in Morocco, where agriculture is exempted from taxes. His personal holding company SIGER has shares in the large agricultural group Les domaines agricoles (originally called Les domaines royaux, now commonly known as Les domaines), which was founded by Hassan II. In 2008, Telquel estimated that Les domaines had a revenue of $157 million (1.5 billion dirhams), with 170,000 tons of citrus exported in that year. According to the same magazine, the company officially owns 12,000 hectares of agricultural lands. Chergui, a manufacturer of dairy products, is the most recognizable brand of the group. Between 1994 and 2004, the group was managed by Mohammed's brother-in-law Khalid Benharbit, the husband of Princess Lalla Hasna. Les domaines also owns the Royal Golf de Marrakech, which originally belonged to Thami El Glaoui.

His palace's daily operating budget is reported by Forbes to be $960,000, which is paid by the Moroccan state as part of a 2.576 billion dirhams/year budget as of 2014, with much of it accounted for by the expense of personnel, clothes and car repairs.

Royal pardon scandal

Protests broke out in Rabat on 2 August 2013 after Mohammed pardoned 48 jailed Spaniards, including Daniel Galván, a pedophile who had been serving a 30-year sentence for raping 11 children aged between 4 and 15. In response to the protests, he revoked Galván's pardon and Morocco issued an international arrest warrant; Galván was arrested in Spain, where he continued his sentence.

Those pardoned included a drug trafficking suspect, who was released before standing trial. The detainee, Antonio Garcia, a recidivist drug trafficker, had been arrested in possession of 9 tons of hashish in Tangier and was sentenced to 10 years. He had resisted arrest using a firearm. Some media claimed that his release embarrassed Spain.

Royal involvement in business is a major topic in Morocco, but public discussion of it is sensitive. The US embassy in Rabat reported to Washington in a leaked cable that "corruption is prevalent at all levels of Moroccan society". Corruption allegedly reaches the highest levels in Morocco, where the business interests of Mohammed and some of his advisors influence "every large housing project," according to WikiLeaks documents published in December 2010 and quoted in The Guardian. The documents released by the whistleblower website also quote the case of a businessman working for a US consortium, whose plans in Morocco were paralysed for months after he refused to join forces with a company linked with the royal palace. The documents quoted a company executive linked to the royal family as saying at a meeting that decisions on big investments in the kingdom were taken by only three people: the king, his secretary Mounir Majidi, and the monarch's close friend, adviser and former classmate Fouad Ali El Himma. This corruption especially affects the housing sector, the WikiLeaks documents show.

In April 2016, Mohammed's personal secretary Mounir Majidi was named in the Panama Papers.