Monday, September 3, 2012

British gov’t in spotlight for allowing Mubarak regime officials to keep assets in UK


The British government has been criticized for allowing some members of Egypt’s former military dictatorship to keep millions of pounds in properties and businesses in violation of international sanctions, according to a story on Sunday in The Guardian.

British ministers have also been accused of wanting to preserve financial relationships with their Arab counterparts than “securing justice” the paper wrote, after a six month investigation conducted by BBC Arabic was released by The Guardian and al-Hayat newspaper at the same time.

The assets cited by The Guardian include a £10m ($15.8m) home in Knightsbridge allegedly owned by former president Hosni Mubarak’s son, Gamal, who is currently in jail on charges of money laundering. The London property has not been frozen for investigation the newspaper reported.
The wife of former tourism and housing minister Ahmed el-Maghrabi, Naglaa el-Ghazarley, registered a business in November last year, despite being on an internationally agreed upon sanctions list, and well after the ouster of Mubarak.

The lawyer Tim Daniel told The Guardian it was “extraordinary that someone on the sanctions list could begin trading in the UK in this way.”

The British Foreign Office has said it is working with its Egyptian counterparts to find the Mubarak regime’s assets but the new revelations are likely to cause some embarrassment.

The Egyptian government has sued the British Treasury for “dragging its heels on asset recovery” according the newspaper.

It quoted Dr. Mohammed Mahsoob, a public investigator who led enquiries into Egypt’s “stolen billions” and a member of the cabinet as saying: “This is pure political profiteering that doesn’t reflect the concept of British justice and democracy that we teach in Egyptian universities.”

However, Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, Alistair Burt, refuted claims and told the newspaper: “We are working closely with [Egyptian] authorities to identify and restrain assets their courts have identified as stolen.”

Switzerland has frozen almost £500m ($7.94m) of suspect Egyptian assets whereas Britain UK has frozen less than a fifth of that and returned none of it to Egypt, The Guardian reported.

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