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Al-Ahram Weekly 5 - 11 August 1999 Issue No. 441 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 5 - 11 August 1999 Issue No. 441
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Focus Interview Features Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Judge gets tougher
By Gamal Essam El-DinThe drama of "the loan deputies" case reached a new high this week as tough investigating judge Mohsen Sobhi ordered that two more members of parliament -- Khaled Mahmoud and Mahmoud Azzam -- be placed into police custody for 15 days. Two weeks ago, Judge Sobhi triggered parliamentary wrath by ordering MP Tawfik Abduh Ismail, a former chairman of the Planning and Budget Committee and a former minister of aviation and tourism implicated in the same case, into custody for 15 days. This week, he renewed Ismail's detention for a further 15 days.
Khaled Mahmoud, MP for the Delta governorate of Beheira and the son of a former minister of local administration, was charged with obtaining LE32 million in loans from both Al-Nil Bank and the Commercial Bank of Daqahliya without adequate collateral. Mahmoud, chairman of a joint-stock construction material company in which Saudi Arabia's Bin Laden family holds a major interest, was also accused of using these loans in illegal speculation on lands in the Heliopolis and Zamalek districts.
The 38-year-old Mahmoud, who has been described "the most aggressive" among the four "loan deputies", took parliamentary circles by surprise last week by submitting his resignation to the People's Assembly Speaker Fathi Sorour. Mahmoud said that "his current critical situation prevents him from resuming the performance of his parliamentary duties." Sorour has said that Mahmoud's resignation offer will have to be put up for discussion by the Assembly in a plenary meeting at the beginning of its next session.
Mahmoud Azzam, a Giza governorate deputy, was charged with taking advantage of the position of his wife Aleyya El-Ayyouti -- then vice-president of Al-Nil Bank who fled the country to France three weeks ago -- to obtain LE179 million in loans without notifying the bank's board of directors or listing the loans in the bank's books. The 50-year-old Azzam, a private contractor, predicted earlier that he was sure he would be imprisoned by the investigating judge.
Apparently on the basis of a similar "prediction", the third "loan deputy", Ibrahim Aglan from Beheira governorate, went into hiding. A week ago Aglan was summoned to appear before Judge Sobhi for questioning. Aglan produced a medical certificate claiming that he had suffered a heart attack and could not, therefore, comply with the summons. Sobhi responded by ordering the formation of a medical committee to verify the truth of Aglan's health. The MP made his disappearing act and, rumour has it, is hiding out in Alexandria.
In a further show of toughness, Judge Sobhi rejected a request from the most controversial of all four "loan deputies", former Minister Ismail, that he be held in a private hospital on grounds of the critical condition of his health. Instead, Sobhi asked the Medical Department at the Prisons Authority to provide Ismail with the required medical care.
At present the situation stands as follows: four more defendants, all of them banking businessmen, have been ordered into custody; two new MPs, Mahmoud and Azzam, also ordered into custody, and release orders -- with or without bail -- of five other defendants while three defendants, Aleyya Al-Ayyouti, Hossam El-Manawi and Ibrahim Aglan, have fled.
To tighten the court's control on the case, the prosecutor-general, Maher Abdel-Wahed, ordered this week that all the defendants currently being investigated in "the loan deputies case" -- including four members of parliament, 15 businessmen and 13 bankers -- be barred from travelling outside the country.
Commenting on the dramatic developments, Parliamentary Speaker Sorour said that three deputies in custody did not mean that they would receive prison sentences in the end. "Besides, the fact that four deputies -- out of a total 454 -- are now standing trial by no means mars the Assembly's image as a whole," Sorour said.
