Cairo: Egypt's former tourism minister
Zuheir Garranah was on Tuesday jailed for five years on charges of
corruption, a justice source said.
Garranah, who was sentenced along with two
businessmen, was charged with wasting public funds worth USD
51 million, after authorising the sale of state-owned land for
well below the market price.
He is the second minister who served under toppled
president Hosni Mubarak to be jailed for fraud, as part of a
sweeping probe into corruption by the country's new military
rulers.
Garranah is said to have ordered the sale of 305
million square metres -- some of which was oil-rich -- to
businessmen Hisham al-Hazeq and Hussein Segwani for one dollar
per square metre for tourism projects.
He was detained on February 17, less than a week after
a popular uprising forced Mubarak to step down and hand power
to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.
The trial of corrupt officials, including Mubarak, was
a key demand of protesters.
On Thursday, a court sentenced once feared Egyptian
interior minister Habib al-Adly to 12 years for corruption.
Adly, who ran Mubarak's security services for more
than a decade before the strongman's overthrow in the face of
18 days of mass protests, was convicted of money-laundering
and illicitly enriching himself while in office.
He faces a second trial on charges of ordering police
to shoot protesters, and a third alongside the former premier
and finance minister over a deal with a German firm to supply
Egypt with licence plates at allegedly inflated prices.
Mubarak is currently under arrest in a hospital in
Sharm el-Sheikh, while the military mulls moving him to a
prison hospital in Cairo.
His two sons Alaa and Gamal, along with dozens
officials and businessmen associated with the former regime
are being detained in Cairo's notorious Tora prison which
housed political dissidents during in the Mubarak era.
The USD 10 billion a year tourism industry accounts
for more than a tenth of the country's GDP and employs more
than 12 per cent of its workforce.
More than 14 million tourists visited Egypt in 2010, a
record number, with around a third of them hitting the Red Sea
Coast.
The vital industry has weathered regional unrest
before, including after bombings in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2005
that killed 88 people.
PTI
First Published: Tuesday, May 10, 2011, 23:49