Shafik sent to criminal court for corruption

The investigating judge, Hesham Rauf, has decided to refer the losing presidential candidate, Ahmed Shafik, to Cairo Criminal Court on charges of profiteering and seizing in the region of 3 billion EGP ($500 million) of public funds from the Civil Aviation Sector, according to a report from Hassan Abu al-Azm, a former MP for the al-Nour Party. Judicial sources told Arabstoday that the judge made the decision after listening to Abu al-Azm, who also provided official documents from the Central Auditing Organisation, an independent institution established as an instrument of public finance control. The documents show that the Ministry of Aviation owes debts of 3.28 billion EGP to the Central Bank, 1.7 billion EGP to the National Investment Bank, 750 million EGP to the National Bank, 50 million EGP to the Saudi Finance Bank, 330 million EGP from a French loan and 445 million EGP to the Japan Bank for International Cooperation. The sources also added that, in his report, Abu al-Azm demonstrated that Shafik handed the management of Cairo Airport over to foreign companies, for purposes of profiteering. In addition, it also claimed that he pumped 240 million EGP of funds from the Ministry of Civil Aviation into its subsidiary companies and wasted 54 million EGP in renewing electricity networks in the airport’s Terminal 2. The news comes after Judge Ossama al-Saidy also referred Shafik to Cairo Criminal Court, along with with Alaa and Gamal, sons of the former president Mubarak, on charges of squandering public funds by selling a 40,000 square meter plot of land in Ismailia that belonged to the Cooperative Housing Association of Air Force officers at below-market rates to the two brothers.pe