Human rights activists on Sunday filed a lawsuit demanding that a judge be assigned to investigate corrupt privatization deals.
Khalid Ali, a lawyer who heads the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, said that the Administrative Court in Egypt has revealed administrative and financial corruption in some cases of privatization. Those cases should be investigated and indictments issued, he said.
In recent months, a series of court decisions have challenged past privatization deals, thereby rattling investor confidence already shaken by months of unrest since former President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February.
In September, an Egyptian court ruling cancelled deals to privatize three industrial companies and ordered their return to the state, saying that the agreements represented a squandering of public funds.
The court ruled that the sales of Tanta Flax and Oil Co., Misr Shebin al-Kom Spinning and Weaving and al-Nasr Company for Steam Boilers should be annulled, while the companies and their assets be returned to state ownership.
Furthermore, last September, another Egyptian administrative court ruled that the sale of more than 50 percent of Nile Cotton Ginning Co. in the late 1990’s violated regulations, as its shares were substantially undervalued at the time.
Ali added that the court revealed that these cases involved the deliberate squandering of public funds, a crime which amounts to a criminal offense. He went as far as to describe these cases as "the leading cause of the Egyptian economy’s destruction."
He went on to say it was necessary to summon and question members of the public sector’s ministerial committee.
The members included Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, current Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri, former Prime Minister Atef Mohamed Ebeid, presidential hopeful Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, and twenty others.
