Egyptian governor arrested over corruption charges

CAIRO, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- An Egyptian governer and two businessmen were arrested Sunday evening by an official anti-corruption body over corruption charges, official MENA news agency reported.

The report did not include details, but local media said that the Administrative Control Authority (ACA) busted Hesham Abdel-Baset, governor of Minufiya province north of the capital Cairo, for involvement in bribery, profiteering and looting public funds.

The 47-year-old governor took office in February 2015 in a reshuffle that included appointment of 17 new governors.

Egypt has been launching a massive anti-corruption campaign 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 public funds.

In August 2017, the ACA arrested a female deputy governor of the coastal province of Alexandria, along with five businessmen, over a bribery of about one million Egyptian pounds (56,000 U.S. dollars) to stop the removal of illegally constructed buildings on state-owned land.

Earlier in February 2017, an Egyptian court sentenced a former irrigation minister to seven years in prison over corruption related to illegal sales of agricultural lands for construction.

Last January, the authorities arrested a former advisor of the finance minister for receiving one million Egyptian pounds from a contractor as part of a larger bribe for mispricing a state-owned land.

A former agriculture minister and his deputy were also sentenced to 10 years in prison over receiving bribes to grant state-owned land licenses to a business tycoon in 2016. Enditem