Mubarak used the 18 days to transfer up to $60 billion into untraceable accounts

[Nawazish]

THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH; WITH FILES FROM AGENCE-FRANCE-PRESSE FEBRUARY 13, 2011


Hosni Mubarak used the 18 days it took for protesters to topple him to shift his vast wealth into untraceable accounts overseas, Western intelligence sources said on Saturday night.

The former Egyptian president is accused of amassing a fortune of more than $4.5 billion Cdn, although some suggest it could be as much as $60 billion during his 30 years in power.

It is claimed his wealth was tied up in foreign banks, investments, bullion and properties in London, New York, Paris and Beverly Hills.

In the knowledge that his downfall was imminent, Mubarak is understood to have attempted to place his assets out of reach of potential investigators. On Friday night, Swiss authorities announced they were freezing any assets Mubarak and his family may hold in the country's banks, while pressure was growing for Britain to do the same.

Mubarak has strong connections to London, and it is thought many millions of dollars are stashed in Britain.

A senior Western intelligence source claimed that Mubarak had begun moving his fortune in recent weeks.

"We're aware of some urgent conversations within the Mubarak family about how to save these assets," said the source. "We think their financial advisers have moved some of the money around. If he had real money in Zurich, it may be gone by now."

The revelation came as the ruling military council, which took power as Mubarak stepped down on Friday, confirmed its pledge to hand power to an elected civilian government, although it did not set a date.

Demands were growing among protesters in Cairo on Saturday night for Mubarak to be put on trial for corruption.

The former president was at his family villa in the resort town of Sharm El Sheikh.

There were unconfirmed reports that he was effectively under house arrest, as the focus of protesters moved from toppling the hated ruler to seizing his fortune.

During the protests last week, Ibrahim Yousri, a former deputy foreign minister, and 20 lawyers petitioned Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, Egypt's prosecutor general, to put Mubarak and his family on trial for stealing state wealth.

A U.S. official told The Sunday Telegraph: "There's no doubt that there will have been some frantic financial activity behind the scenes.

"They can lose the homes and some of the bank accounts, but they will have wanted to get the gold bars and other investments to safe quarters."

How much Mubarak has stashed away -- and where he has hidden that fortune -- in the past 30 years is open to speculation. His wife, Suzanne Mubarak, 69, is half-Welsh, while it is claimed the couple's two sons, Gamal and Alaa, may even have British passports.

On Saturday, Egypt's chief prosecutor banned sacked prime minister Ahmed Nazif from leaving the country, and also banned the widely despised former interior minister Habib al-Adly from travelling and froze his assets, the news agency MENA announced.

As well, the chief prosecutor has ordered the foreign ministry to freeze the assets of several former ministers and steel magnate Ahmed Ezz, a top official in Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP).

Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal


http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/protests+grew+Egypt+Mubarak+moved+billions/4273572/story.html

 

[canadian]

Mubarak Family Riches Attract New Focus

Mubarak Family Riches Attract New Focus
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR, DAVID ROHDE and ARAM ROSTON

Published: February 12, 2011

Amr Nabil/Associated Press

Gamal Mubarak, shown in December and once groomed to succeed his father, set up an investment firm in 1996.


During President Hosni Mubaraks nearly 30-year rule, he and his family were not flamboyant with their wealth, particularly by the standards of other leaders in the Middle East. While there is no indication that Gamal Mubarak or the bank were involved in illegal activity, his investments show how deeply the family is woven into Egypts economy.
Now with Hosni Mubarak out of power, there are growing calls for an accounting to begin.
Within hours of Mr. Mubaraks resignation on Friday, Swiss officials ordered all banks in Switzerland to search for and freeze any assets of the former president, his family or close associates. In Egypt, opposition leaders vowed to press for a full investigation of Mr. Mubaraks finances.
Tracing the money is likely to be difficult because business in Egypt was largely conducted in secret among a small group connected to Mr. Mubarak.
Now we open all the files, said George Ishak, head of the National Association for Change, an opposition umbrella group. We will research everything, all of them: the families of the ministers, the family of the president, everyone.
Estimates of the Mubaraks fortune vary wildly, including a widespread rumor that they are worth as much as $70 billion. United States officials say that figure is vastly exaggerated and put the familys wealth at $2 billion to $3 billion.
Gamal Mubarak, who was being groomed to be the next president, and his older brother Alaa, were considered major figures in the business elite.
Gamal Mubaraks private equity business came through his ties to EFG-Hermes, the largest investment bank in Egypt. EFG-Hermes, which listed assets of $8 billion on its 2010 financial statement, was pivotal in Egypts privatization program, in which state companies were sold to politically connected businessmen.
The connection to EFG-Hermes reaches back to the mid-1990s. After Gamal Mubarak left Bank of America, he set up an investment firm called Medinvest Associates in London in 1996 with two partners. Medinvest, in turn, is owned by an international securities fund in Cyprus called Bullion Company Ltd. According to EFG-Hermes, Gamal Mubarak owns half of Bullion, and records in Cyprus show that his brother Alaa is on the board.
Bullion owns 35 percent of the private equity operation, which has $919 million under management, according to the chief executive of EFG-Hermes, Hassan Heikal. The equity fund invests in oil and gas, steel, cement, food and cattle.
Mr. Heikal said that other than the private equity investment, Gamal Mubarak had no other ties directly, indirectly, offshore or through family to the bank. He said the fund constituted only 7 percent of the banks business. Questioned about the size of Gamals initial investment in the 1990s, Mr. Heikal declined to elaborate.
A spokeswoman for EFG-Hermes said in a statement that the bank has received no special privileges or consideration from the Egyptian government and has always operated under legal and transparent best-practices. Calls to Medinvests office in London and Bullions office in Cyprus last week were not returned. In the past, Gamal Mubarak has denied any wrongdoing and said he was involved in legitimate business activities.
For years, opposition groups have contended that since Egypt privatized its economy in the 1990s, the Mubaraks and a few dozen elite families have held stakes in the sale of state assets and in new business ventures. Later, some of these businessmen were appointed to government positions overseeing the very businesses they ran. Connections to the presidential palace brought benefits like the opportunity to develop government real estate and access to easy bank loans.
The corruption of the Mubarak family was not stealing from the budget, it was transforming political capital into private capital, said Samer Soliman, a professor of political economy at American University in Cairo.
Occasionally, members of the ruling elite who fell out of favor were suddenly convicted of financial corruption charges, but generally, the inner workings of the system have remained hidden.
One businessman who won government approval for various major development projects is Magdi Rasekh, Alaa Mubaraks father-in-law. Mr. Rasekh is chairman of the board of Sixth of October Development & Investment Company, which built one of a series of sprawling new developments in the desert outside Cairo. The government-backed development, Sixth of October City, is home to 500,000 people, an entirely new satellite city with an industrial park, a hospital, villas and middle-class apartments. Efforts to reach Mr. Rasekh were not successful.
As attention turns to tracking the Mubaraks purported wealth, rumors of vast real estate holdings by the family have swirled. But the only property outside of Egypt that has emerged is the London townhouse at 28 Wilton Place in Knightsbridge where Gamal Mubarak lived when he was an investment banker there.
But determining the precise ownership of the house shows why investigating the familys wealth is complicated. A woman answering the front door of the house said the Mubaraks had sold it, but property agents said there was no record of a sale, and neighbors said they had seen Gamal Mubarak and his family entering it several times recently.
According to British records, the home is owned by a company called Ocral Enterprises of Panama. The registered agent for the company in Panama is a local law firm. A lawyer at the firm said that he could not reveal Ocrals owner. The lawyer said his firm received its instructions regarding Ocral from a company in Muscat, Oman, which he declined to identify.
Though Swiss banks have begun the search for Mubarak family assets, experts said any money would be returned to Egypt only if its new government formally demanded them.
Egypt has to run a criminal investigation, said Daniel Thelesklaf, director of the International Center for Asset Recovery in Switzerland. A lot will depend on the new Egyptian government.
As the protest intensified last week, government prosecutors froze the assets of five government ministers and imposed a travel ban on them. The move appeared to be an effort by Mr. Mubarak to distance himself from the wealthy businessmen who had become the focus of public ire over corruption. It is unclear whether the military, which now runs the government and has vast business holdings itself, will allow a full inquiry into the Mubarak familys wealth.
Perhaps the most difficult question to answer is the level of corruption involving Hosni Mubarak himself. Former American diplomats said he appeared to live relatively simply, particularly by the standards of rulers in the region. His main residence outside Cairo was a villa in a private compound in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el Sheik, where he went after resigning the presidency on Friday. Diplomats said the villa was not particularly grand for the neighborhood, smaller than the nearby home of Bakr bin Laden, a member of the wealthy Saudi construction clan and a half-brother of Osama bin Laden.
Mr. Mubaraks villa is in a compound developed by Hussein Salem, an Egyptian businessman and close friend of the former president. Mr. Salem pleaded guilty in 1983 to overcharging the Pentagon $8 million for shipping military equipment to Egypt. Despite the conviction, he prospered in Mr. Mubaraks Egypt and heads a lucrative business that ships natural gas to Israel.



Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/world/middleeast/13wealth.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)

 

[sahiL]

lucky egyptianz and tunisianz to get rid off their corrupt leaderz.....i don,t know hamara nasha kab utre ga aur zardari ko laat mar k jail mein bnd krein gey

 

[forzeb]

kia faida itni daulat akathi kerney ka jana to phir bhi khali hath hay. Wahan yeh daulat kaam nahi any ki. Is say to acha tha yeh daulat gareebon main bant ker dua hi lay leta.

 

[Unicorn]

No one knows the truth. One thing is for sure if anyone knows that he transferred up 60 Billion dollars then those accounts are very much TRACEABLE.

 

[zerozero]

So true! aur bhai achanak yeh bhe claim kerdia kay Mubarak richest man! aj say pehlay kabhi nahin suna! Hamesha Bill Gates, or Buffet k naam aya Forbes main! balkay first 100 main bhe nahin tha Mubarak ka naam!
ab aik dam hogaya!
wah rey Western Media! :)

No one knows the truth. One thing is for sure if anyone knows that he transferred up 60 Billion dollars then those accounts are very much TRACEABLE.

 

[Unicorn]

So true! aur bhai achanak yeh bhe claim kerdia kay Mubarak richest man! aj say pehlay kabhi nahin suna! Hamesha Bill Gates, or Buffet k naam aya Forbes main! balkay first 100 main bhe nahin tha Mubarak ka naam!
ab aik dam hogaya!
wah rey Western Media! :)

You are so right. More than often this type of illogical allegations are levied against good people , publicized and believed by masses. One of the reason good people stay away from politics.

 

[ahmadalikhan]

Mir Jaffar or Mir Saddiq or Both.................????

http://www.jang.com.pk/jang/feb2011-daily/14-02-2011/updates/2-14-2011_62631_1.gif