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Sakher el-Materi, son of deposed Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, bought this Montreal mansion for $2.5-million.

Relatives of former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali are under increasing pressure from Canadian authorities, with the RCMP raiding their lawyer's office and their Montreal-area mansion being put on the auction block.

Mr. Ben Ali's son-in-law, Sakher el-Materi, had paid $2.5-million in cash for a house in the posh enclave of Westmount in 2008, months before his wife gave birth to their second daughter in Montreal.

The city of Westmount has now ordered that the house be publicly auctioned next month for the owner's failure to pay municipal taxes, according to a Dec. 2 public notice.

Mr. el-Materi is believed to have fled to Qatar after the collapse of the Ben Ali regime in January. People at the Westmount house have told reporters that Mr. el-Materi has sold the property but it remains registered under his name, provincial records show.

A local contractor and the federal and provincial revenue departments have also placed liens on the Belvedere Place property.

Meanwhile, RCMP officers are focusing on another Ben Ali relative, brother-in-law Belhassen Trabelsi, who came to Montreal after the president's ouster.

The federal government has said that Mr. Trabelsi is not welcome in Canada. Last March, Ottawa passed a law to give itself new powers to freeze assets from corrupt regimes.

On Dec. 6, the Mounties executed a search warrant at the Westmount Square offices of Mr. Trabelsi's lawyer, Donald Kattan.

Mr. Kattan was questioned about whether he had helped manage Mr. Trabelsi's assets, the warrant application says.

Between March and November, Mr. Kattan "voluntarily did not communicate without delay to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police the existence of assets in his possession or under his control and that, to his knowledge, belong to a member of a corrupt regime or their family," the court documents said.

Shortly after Mr. Trabelsi landed in Montreal with his wife and four children on Jan. 20, about $1.39-million (U.S.) was wired from a Lebanese bank, purportedly to buy property in Canada, the court filing says.

Corporate records show that Mr. Trabelsi is the president of a Montreal holding company, Gestion Tucan Inc., which was set up in 2000. The listed address is Mr. Kattan's office.

An employee who answered the phone at Mr. Kattan's firm said that he was out of town and that there would be no comments.

Mr. Trabelsi has held permanent-residency status in Canada since the 1990s. Sources have told The Globe that members of the Ben Ali clan have between $10-million and $20-million in assets in Canada.

Earlier this fall, a court in Tunis sentenced Mr. Trabelsi in absentia to a 15-year jail term.

Tunisia is asking Canada to send Mr. Trabelsi back, a bid complicated by the lack of a bilateral extradition treaty between the two countries.

In August, Tunisia's ambassador to Canada, Mouldi Sakri, sent an extensive file on Mr. Trabelsi to Canada's Justice Department.



With reports from AFP, Celia Donnelly and Ingrid Peritz

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