A Saudi prince on Tuesday waived rights to land he owns in Egypt after authorities ordered it frozen to investigate whether the sale violated Egyptian law, the news agency MENA reported.
Egypt's attorney general ordered Prince al-Waleed bin Talal's assets frozen on Sunday.
"Investigations revealed that… the contract contained unknown provisions that violated the law and gave the company unjustified benefits," the attorney general's spokesperson, Adel al-Saeed, said in a written statement.
The land, owned by al-Waleed's Kingdom Agricultural Development Co. (KADCO), is part of the Toshka desert project to pump water from Egypt's Aswan High Dam reservoir and deliver it to reclaimed agricultural land, located 60km from the Sudanese border.
Al-Saeed said the contract violated Egyptian law because the area KADCO bought was twice the legal limit and because it improperly exempted al-Waleed's company from all taxes and fees.
KADCO, part of Al-Waleed's Kingdom Holding Co., bought 100,000 feddans in Toshka in 1998, soon after the project began. The contract was signed on the Egyptian side by former Agriculture Minister Youssef Wali, whose assests have also been frozen, al-Saeed said.
The contract also granted outright ownership of the land once the company completed payments, violating rules stipulating that land must be completely reclaimed and planted within five years, al-Saeed said.
The Saudi billionaire said he will not resort to international arbitration to challenge the decision, according to MENA.
