Tunisian media mogul and ex-presidential candidate in 2019 elections, Nabil Karoui, has been arrested in Algeria for illegally entering the country.
The CEO of Karoui & Karoui World and owner of the television station, Nessma TV, was arrested in the city of Tebessa, North-East Algeria on the Tunisian border alongside four others including his brother, Ghazi, who is a member of parliament.
Karoui, who is the head of the Heart of Tunisia political party, the second-largest in parliament, had earlier in 2019 during his presidential campaign – which current president Kais Saied won in a runoff with a landslide – been arrested by Tunisian authorities and put in custody for more than six months for alleged money laundering and tax evasion.
Though still under investigation for the alleged crimes, Karoui was released on June 15.
He denies the allegations, claiming that his political opponents were behind his imprisonment.
He has not appeared in public since last month, when Tunisia’s president Kais Saied suspended the prime minister, frozen Parliament, and assumed executive authority, in an abrupt intervention that his Islamist adversaries called a coup.
In 2019, Karoui beat most candidates to reach a run-off for the presidency despite spending most of the campaign behind bars. He ultimately lost in a landslide to Saied.