Egypt jails ex-minister 7 years over corruption

An Egyptian court sentenced on Thursday a former irrigation minister for seven years in prison over corruption related to illegal sales of agricultural lands for construction, official MENA news agency reported.

Giza Criminal Court convicted both former Irrigation Minister Mohamed Nasr El-Din Allam and fugitive businessman Ahmed Abdel-Salam Qura of selling vast areas of agricultural lands in Giza's Ayyat district for construction, wasting public funds of over 37 billion Egyptian pounds (about 2 billion U.S. dollars). The court handed each a seven-year jail term.

The case is part of a large anti-corruption campaign launched by Egypt over the past few years that led to the arrest and imprisonment of several officials and senior employees and the retrieval of large amounts of money.

In April 2016, Egyptian former Minister of Agriculture Salah Helal and his deputy were sentenced to 10 years in prison over receiving bribes to grant state-owned land licenses to prominent Egyptian businessman. Helal was also fined 1 million pounds (56,657 dollars) while his deputy was fined half a million (28,328 dollars).

Likewise, former Supplies Minister Khaled Hanafy resigned in August 2016 amid sharp criticism over using millions of dollars allocated for subsidies to purchase wheat that existed only on papers in the most populous Arab states and the world's largest wheat importer.

Hanafy was also accused of wasting seven million pounds (396,613 dollars) in staying at a luxurious hotel in Cairo since he took office in 2014, yet the minister denied the charges.

In two separate cases in November 2016, the Egypt authorities arrested and sacked two senior judges, one over possession of 68 kilograms of hashish drug and another over accepting a large bribe to acquit a defendant in a drug smuggling case.

In December 2016, the Administrative Control Authority (ACA), an official anti-corruption body, said it busted a national agricultural company's chief over bribery related to favored import orders and a tax official over bribery to reduce a company's taxes of 4 million pounds (226,634 dollars).

Later in December 2016, the authorities busted a senior judicial employee over corruption and found at his home following his reception of bribery 24 million pounds (1,360,000 dollars) and 4 million dollars, 2 million euros (2,130,544 dollars) and 1 million Saudi riyals (266,534 dollars), besides large amounts of gold accessories.

In the same month, an Egyptian court confirmed a three-year jail term against former Housing Minister Mohamed Ibrahim Suleiman and ordered him to refund over 255 million pounds (14,447,528 dollars) to the state over selling vast areas of state-owned lands in new cities to a real estate mogul below market prices.

Hisham Genina, former chief of Egypt's Central Auditing Authority (CAA), made statements late 2015 alleging mass corruption in the country's institutions involving over 600 billion pounds (about 34 billion dollars) in 2015 alone.

However, a committee formed by order of President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi refuted Genina's charges as "misleading and exaggerated." Genina was sacked in March 2016 by a presidential decree.

Out of 168 countries and regions, Egypt ranked the 88th least corrupt in the Corruption Perceptions Index 2015 reported by Berlin-based Transparency International, which shows improvement of Egypt's anti-corruption campaign as the country ranked 95th in 2014 and 114th in 2013. Endit