Former presidential hopeful and chairman of Strong Egypt Party Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh praised the arrest of former Agriculture Minister Salah Helal over corruption charges.
"The arrest of a corrupt minister out of thousands of other corruptors is an appreciated step to lead to holding all the corrupt who have looted billions from the homeland's wealth," he wrote on Twitter Monday.
Egypt's agriculture minister was arrested in Cairo on Monday after being told to step down in light of an investigation into corruption at his ministry, judicial and media sources said.
He was detained after a meeting in the premier's office, a judicial source told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"He was arrested as part of an investigation into a major case of corruption in his ministry," the official MENA news agency reported.
Officials at the agriculture ministry are alleged to have taken bribes to help businessmen illegally acquire state land, a prosecution official and media reports said.
The prosecution service had last week banned media from publishing any information about the case.
Helal, 59, an agronomy graduate, rose through the ranks at the agriculture ministry to become minister in March.
Mubarak and many of his former ministers were placed on trial following his overthrow amid popular demands for them to be held accountable for years of corruption.
Many former regime figures have been found not guilty in retrials, however.
In March, Mubarak's once feared interior minister Habib al-Adly was acquitted of corruption charges.
He was cleared of illegally accumulating around LE181 million, and the court also lifted an asset freeze on him and members of his family.
Mubarak himself and his two sons Alaa and Gamal were sentenced to three years in prison earlier this year for corruption.
But they had been in detention for much of the past four years, and may be released early when time served is accounted for.
