Tunis - Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali's son-in-law will buy a nearly 40-per-cent share in the country's leading private media company, the weekly magazine Jeune Afrique reported Thursday.

The purchase would give Mohammed Sakhr al-Matri, 29, a controlling share in Dar al-Sabbah, the publisher of the Arabic-language daily al-Sabbah and the French-language daily Le Temps. Dar al-Sabbah also publishes a weekly edition of al-Sabbah and the weekly magazine Sabbah al-Khir.

Al-Matri also has plans to open a television station, Jeune Afrique reported on Thursday. In 2007, he opened a private radio station, Radio Zeitouna, which is dedicated to religious programming.

The young tycoon, whom friends routinely describe as "a religious man with clean hands," also has holdings in companies that trade in automobiles, pharmaceuticals, food industries, tourism, real estate and shipping.

He also recently won a license to begin operating an Islamic bank, which would be Tunisia's first domestic Islamic finance bank.

In a 2008 report, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said that Tunisian authorities have refused to grant critical media outlets permission to operate and have used control of public-sector advertising and subsidies, as well as provisions of the Penal Code, to create a "fawning" press in Tunisia.(dpa)