Issue No.588
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30 May - 5 June 2002 Issue No.588 Home news |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
MPs face corruption charges
Charges against two MPs are amongst several high profile cases in what seems a renewed crackdown on corruption. Gamal Essam El-Din reports
A record number of high-profile corruption cases have been referred to trial in the last two weeks. In less than three days, Prosecutor-General Maher Abdel-Wahed sent two MPs, as well as 28 high-ranking officials at the Irrigation Ministry and Al-Nasr Company for Castings to trial before the Supreme State Security Court. All the defendants face charges of corruption, abuse of power, and profiteering.
The two MPs, Bahaaeddin El- Miligi and Hussein Eweiss, both representing the National Democratic Party (NDP) from Fayoum, were stripped of their parliamentary immunity by the People's Assembly so that they could be investigated for the charges leveled against them. El- Miligi and Eweiss, along with 17 other defendants, are accused of forging official documents and facilitating the illegal acquisition of public assets, amongst other charges.
With the help of a number of state officials and private lawyers, El- Miligi allegedly forged as many as 16 documents in order to falsely obtain as much as LE162 million in compensation from the state, for lands sequestrated by the government in 1961.
The scheme involved forging documents claiming that the original owners of the land had not been compensated by the government, but the Administrative Control Authority (ACA), the state's supervisory body, found that the original owners had indeed already been given due compensation.
It has also been alleged that El- Miligi, making use of his position as head of Fayoum's Local Council, and Eweiss, who is chairman of the Fayoum branch of the Agriculture Syndicate, cooked up a scheme whereby the Agriculture Syndicate was to compensate the alleged original owners of the 23 feddans on which the syndicate offices were built.
According to the charge sheet, Eweiss gave El-Miligi and his accomplices LE300,000 of the syndicate's funds. This amount, it is claimed, was just a fraction of the LE3.24 million El-Miligi had already collected from his wide ranging sequestration scheme.
El-Miligi, who is charged with profiteering, forgery, and facilitating the illegal acquisition of public funds, is still in custody after refusing to pay LE120,000 in bail.
Eweiss, apparently in a bid to avoid prosecution, gave back the LE300,000 that the syndicate had paid El-Miligi. The prosecution, however, refused to drop the charges, emphasising the fact that it did not occur until after the ACA began investigating the case. Eweiss was released after paying his LE120,000 in bail.
It was a busy week for Prosecutor- General Abdel-Wahed. On 26 May, he ordered the sequestration of the assets and funds of seven defendants in the Al-Nasr Castings Company corruption case. These seven, along with 20 other high-ranking officials at the partially privatised public sector company, are implicated in the corruption case. All, including the company's Chairman Osama Abdel- Wahab and his private secretary, are accused of profiteering and squandering LE1.4 billion of the company's money.
A recent report by the Public Funds Investigation unit affiliated with the Interior Ministry indicates that as many as 258 corruption cases involving hundreds of millions of pounds were referred to the prosecution in the past 27 months.
Amongst those cases is the one involving nine high-ranking officials at the Irrigation Ministry whom Abdel- Wahed, on 22 May, also referred to trial before the Supreme State Security Court. They are charged with squandering LE43 million of the ministry's funds, as well as receiving LE30 million in kickbacks for awarding certain businessmen with irrigation construction project contracts.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Atef Ebeid met with ACA officials, as well as six ministers and six provincial governors, to mark the regulatory body's 20th anniversary. "I want to emphasise on this occasion," said Ebeid, "that no privileges will be granted in a country that adopts supremacy of law as its motto." Ebeid hailed the ACA's work as being in the interest of the nation by strengthening the principle of the rule of law.
MPs have received their fair share of ACA scrutiny, with former MP Fawzi El-Sayed, a construction magnate, sentenced on 15 January to three years imprisonment after he was found guilty of forging documents to obtain building permits.
On the other hand, Salah Ragab, an NDP deputy from Gharbiya, was acquitted of charges of faking official documents which indicated that he was a graduate of Ain Shams University's Faculty of Athletic Education and a member of Al-Ahli Sporting Club. Ragab was punished, however, by the assembly's Ethics Committee for faking the signature of Mustafa El-Fiqi, head of parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, on a job request for one of his relatives. He will be sitting out the assembly's next round.
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