Egypt bans Mubarak from travel, freezes assets
GALLERY
Motivated by recent shows of political strength by neighbors in Egypt, demonstrators in the Middle East and North Africa are taking to the streets of many cities to rally for change.
Monday, February 28, 2011; 5:24 PM
CAIRO - Egypt's top prosecutor on Monday barred former president Hosni Mubarak and his family from leaving the country and seized control of Mubarak's assets as the new government moved ahead with an investigation into charges of corruption.
Mubarak, who fled Cairo more than two weeks ago, is accused by opponents of diverting millions of dollars from official coffers.
The office of prosecutor Abdel Meguid Mahmoud did not disclose details of the investigation involving the family. But it said the travel ban applied to Mubarak, his wife Suzanne, his two sons and their wives.
The pro-government newspaper Al Ahram, citing military sources, reported on its Web site Monday that the former president's son Gamal Mubarak had been stopped by the military Sunday when he attempted to leave the country.
News of the sanctions, and the possibility that they could lead to a formal prosecution, gave a boost to activists who had grown frustrated with what they see as the slow pace of reforms since Mubarak's fall. While the delay may have allowed the former ruling family time to conceal some of its wealth, an official sanction of any kind against the man who dominated the government for three decades was welcome news, they said.
"It's important, even just symbolically," said Hala Mustafa, editor of Democracy Review, an Egyptian quarterly. "It's hard to imagine the government would ask Interpol to go and find him if he left, but at least it shows they understand what happened here was a real revolution," she said. "Now they need to go further."
In Tarhir Square, center of the massive uprising that forced Mubarak from office, the development was greeted as a victory, even if an incremental one.
"We pressured the government to do this and the government responded," said Ahmed Muhammed Zayed, who had been sleeping under a suspended blanket in the square for two nights. "That is why we need to pressure them some more. This is a drop in the ocean."
Experts in the field said tracking down Mubarak's millions is not as easy as simply freezing his assets, or those of his family. Just finding the assets can be time-consuming because they likely are hidden in shell companies and entities incorporated in countries known as tax havens or secrecy jurisdictions, they said.
After Mubarak was forced out of office, Switzerland sent notices to banks with a list of Mubarak family names and asked that their assets be seized. But specialists in the area said it is likely that many, if not most, accounts are not in the family name.
"It isn't sitting all in one account where they can go and freeze it," said Jack D. Smith, a former U.S. banking regulator who is now a law professor at George Washington University. "If you don't get it quickly, stuff that's not frozen disappears. You have to ask the banks to help you, but it can be done. I'll bet you a lot of banks are still looking."
The legal process of returning them to Egypt could take years, Smith said. Cases involving other leaders have taken longer than a decade.
Estimates of Mubarak's wealth have ranged between $1 billion and $70 billion, and Smith said most are likely wild guesses.
Between 2000 and 2008, about $57.2 billion flowed out of Egypt because of graft and corruption, according to Global Financial Integrity, a program of the nonprofit Center for International Policy. Economists at the nonprofit have developed a methodology to track criminal flow of money from countries globally based upon worldwide figures reported to agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. But the data are for the country as a whole and do not show individual transfers.
The overall number, about $6.4 billion a year, is a staggering number compared with the average income of about $2 a day in Egypt. Yet it places Egypt at No. 21 on a ranking of illicit capital leaving countries. China, Russia and Mexico top the list, and in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar rank ahead of Egypt.
Numbers for Libya are incomplete because the country does not report balance of payments and trade data to the IMF, the group said.
Global Financial Integrity economist Dev Kar estimate that corrupt funds flowing from the Middle East and North Africa between 2000 and 2008 outpaced the world's other regions of developing countries. But the region still trails Asia for overall siphoning of money from domestic economies.
Mubarak is not the first member of his ruling clique to face investigation by the interim government. Several former ministers, party leaders and businessmen close to Mubarak have been jailed in the last two weeks on charges that include money laundering and profiteering.
But neither those arrests nor the fledgling investigation into Mubarak himself have been enough to satisfy protesters, who have remained massed in central Cairo by the hundreds. Even as students returned to class over the weekend and the Egyptian stock exchange was slated to open Tuesday, activists have called for faster changes. The list of demands they have been pressing includes the immediate resignation of Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik, a former Mubarak ally, the release of political prisoners and the arrest of those who opened fire on protesters early in the revolt.
On Monday, one of the leading protest groups threatened to cut off negotiations with the military council running the interim government unless it agreed to a timetable for its key demands.
Following a five-hour meeting with the council over the weekend, the Coalition for Revolution Youth gave officials two days to set a schedule or face the return of huge crowds in the streets, according to a posting on its Facebook page.
"In the event that a timeline is not set in response to said demands," the statement said, "the coalition will stop all negotiations with the supreme council and will work with the masses of revolutionaries in Egypt to pressure for their achievement."
hendrixs@washpost.com Grimaldi reported from Washington.
(source:the washingtonpost)
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The office of prosecutor Abdel Meguid Mahmoud did not disclose details of the investigation involving the family. But it said the travel ban applied to Mubarak, his wife Suzanne, his two sons and their wives.
The pro-government newspaper Al Ahram, citing military sources, reported on its Web site Monday that the former president's son Gamal Mubarak had been stopped by the military Sunday when he attempted to leave the country.
News of the sanctions, and the possibility that they could lead to a formal prosecution, gave a boost to activists who had grown frustrated with what they see as the slow pace of reforms since Mubarak's fall. While the delay may have allowed the former ruling family time to conceal some of its wealth, an official sanction of any kind against the man who dominated the government for three decades was welcome news, they said.
"It's important, even just symbolically," said Hala Mustafa, editor of Democracy Review, an Egyptian quarterly. "It's hard to imagine the government would ask Interpol to go and find him if he left, but at least it shows they understand what happened here was a real revolution," she said. "Now they need to go further."
In Tarhir Square, center of the massive uprising that forced Mubarak from office, the development was greeted as a victory, even if an incremental one.
"We pressured the government to do this and the government responded," said Ahmed Muhammed Zayed, who had been sleeping under a suspended blanket in the square for two nights. "That is why we need to pressure them some more. This is a drop in the ocean."
Experts in the field said tracking down Mubarak's millions is not as easy as simply freezing his assets, or those of his family. Just finding the assets can be time-consuming because they likely are hidden in shell companies and entities incorporated in countries known as tax havens or secrecy jurisdictions, they said.
After Mubarak was forced out of office, Switzerland sent notices to banks with a list of Mubarak family names and asked that their assets be seized. But specialists in the area said it is likely that many, if not most, accounts are not in the family name.
"It isn't sitting all in one account where they can go and freeze it," said Jack D. Smith, a former U.S. banking regulator who is now a law professor at George Washington University. "If you don't get it quickly, stuff that's not frozen disappears. You have to ask the banks to help you, but it can be done. I'll bet you a lot of banks are still looking."
Estimates of Mubarak's wealth have ranged between $1 billion and $70 billion, and Smith said most are likely wild guesses.
Between 2000 and 2008, about $57.2 billion flowed out of Egypt because of graft and corruption, according to Global Financial Integrity, a program of the nonprofit Center for International Policy. Economists at the nonprofit have developed a methodology to track criminal flow of money from countries globally based upon worldwide figures reported to agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. But the data are for the country as a whole and do not show individual transfers.
The overall number, about $6.4 billion a year, is a staggering number compared with the average income of about $2 a day in Egypt. Yet it places Egypt at No. 21 on a ranking of illicit capital leaving countries. China, Russia and Mexico top the list, and in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar rank ahead of Egypt.
Numbers for Libya are incomplete because the country does not report balance of payments and trade data to the IMF, the group said.
Global Financial Integrity economist Dev Kar estimate that corrupt funds flowing from the Middle East and North Africa between 2000 and 2008 outpaced the world's other regions of developing countries. But the region still trails Asia for overall siphoning of money from domestic economies.
Mubarak is not the first member of his ruling clique to face investigation by the interim government. Several former ministers, party leaders and businessmen close to Mubarak have been jailed in the last two weeks on charges that include money laundering and profiteering.
But neither those arrests nor the fledgling investigation into Mubarak himself have been enough to satisfy protesters, who have remained massed in central Cairo by the hundreds. Even as students returned to class over the weekend and the Egyptian stock exchange was slated to open Tuesday, activists have called for faster changes. The list of demands they have been pressing includes the immediate resignation of Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik, a former Mubarak ally, the release of political prisoners and the arrest of those who opened fire on protesters early in the revolt.
On Monday, one of the leading protest groups threatened to cut off negotiations with the military council running the interim government unless it agreed to a timetable for its key demands.
Following a five-hour meeting with the council over the weekend, the Coalition for Revolution Youth gave officials two days to set a schedule or face the return of huge crowds in the streets, according to a posting on its Facebook page.
"In the event that a timeline is not set in response to said demands," the statement said, "the coalition will stop all negotiations with the supreme council and will work with the masses of revolutionaries in Egypt to pressure for their achievement."
hendrixs@washpost.com Grimaldi reported from Washington.
(source:the washingtonpost)
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