Parliament approves draft law confiscating terrorist groups' assets

CAIRO-16 April 2018: The Parliament initially approved during its plenary session, held on Monday, the government-drafted law to regulate the legal procedures to seize, manage and dispose terrorist organizations' assets.

In the plenary session, the Parliament discussed the report on the draft law made by the Legislative Affairs Committee and the National Defence Council, which initially approved the draft law on Sunday.

The initial name of the draft law was the draft law to regulate the legal procedures to seize, manage and dispose Muslim Brotherhood’s assets, but the Parliament decided during the plenary session to replace “Muslim Brotherhood” with “terrorist organizations".

The 18-article- draft law aims to regulate the legal procedures to sequester and dispose terrorist groups’ assets, including property, bonds, national or foreign cash as per the rulings of the Cairo Court for Urgent Matters.

According to the draft law, a judiciary ad hoc committee shall be established to take all the relevant necessary measures to implement the court rulings, which include a group, an entity or an individual in the terrorist list. The committee shall be located in Cairo at the Ministry of Justice until an independent headquarter will be established.

Article 3 stipulates that the committee shall be formed of seven judges from the Court of Appeal, serving in the committee for one year, to be renewed annually; the president shall issue a decree in this regard after the Supreme Judicial Council approves.

The draft law stipulates that all the state institutions, including private and public banks, shall cooperate with the committee to implement its resolution, and those who will not provide the committee with the necessary information will be punished with a year in prison and a fine not less than LE 10,000 and not more than LE 50,000.

The Muslim Brotherhood was designated as a terrorist group in 2013 after committing several terrorist attacks to destabilize Egypt and incite interior chaos.

Previously, the Cairo Criminal Court decided to form a committee, led by Mohamed Yasser Aboul Fotouh, in September 2017, to appraise and seize the funds of Muslim Brotherhood enlisted in the terrorist entities list.

The committee has frozen the assets of many Muslim Brotherhood members, including the assets of Cairo Portal Company for Publishing and Distribution, Alef bookstores, the children of Brotherhood leader Sheikh Youssef el-Qaradawi, 11 leading Brotherhood figures and businessman Hassan Malek.

The assets belonging to the detained Islamist politician Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh and 15 others were also confiscated on February 18.

The decision was based on the state’s national security investigations, which revealed that the defendants were using their money for terrorist activities.