Mubarak’s sons acquitted of stock market manipulation charges

CAIRO - 22 February 2020: A Cairo Criminal Court acquitted the two sons of Egypt’s former President Hosni Mubarak, Alaa and Gamal, along with 7 other co-defendants, of charges of stock market manipulation, on Saturday.

The charges included embezzling at least 493.628 million, after they decided to sell Al Watany Bank of Egypt for profiteering via selling the bank assets in the stock exchange.

The Mubaraks’ lawyer Farid al-Dib said the charges aimed at defaming his clients’ reputation, adding that they did not deal in the bank’s shares. Al-Dib noted that 34 shareholders, apart from Alaa and Gamal, who traded in shares and they were not criminalized, saying “there is no crime at all.”

Two of the defendants were not members at the bank’s board of directors when the deal was concluded, al-Dib said. Another defendant has witnessed selling his son’s shares two months before the conclusion of the deal, he added, saying that the shareholders are those who decide to trade in shares not the board of directors. “The Central Bank of Egypt is responsible for this acquisition,” al-Dib said.

In July 2012,former Attorney General Abdel Magid Mahmoud referred the acquitted persons to a criminal court, accusing them of controlling the shares of Al Watany Bank of Egypt by purchasing the largest proportion of shares of small investors through closed investment funds to sell them without disclosing them in the stock exchange.

In June 2013, Mubarak’s sons were released, after being imprisoned for these charges, pending investigations and were bailed LE 100,000 each. On December 1, 2019, Egypt’s Court of Cassation ordered to retry the defendants before another jury.

Late December 2019, an Egyptian administrative court decided to dismiss a lawsuit demanding the authorities to withdraw the orders and decorations of former President Hosni Mubarak and his two sons and to confiscate their properties.

Mubarak, who was ousted following Egypt's 2011 revolution, was convicted by a lower court on corruption charges with his two sons. However, in May 2015, a court sentenced Gamal and Alaa to three years in jail over embezzling at least EGP125 million (USD16 million in 2015) from funds earmarked for maintenance of presidential palaces.

Additional Reporting by Mohamed Zain