Media reports circulated leaked data from the Swiss bank “Credit Suisse”, highlighting the hidden fortunes of many clients, including political figures, former and current rulers, and figures involved in serious crimes.
According to the BBC, media organizations said they had seen the leaks indicating that they included information on bank accounts belonging to several prominent Arab personalities from Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Oman and others.
The Guardian newspaper reported that bank accounts in Credit Suisse belonging to figures affiliated with the regime of the late President Hosni Mubarak.
Most notably his two sons, Alaa and Gamal, who established a business empire in the country, according to the newspaper.
The newspaper indicates that the two brothers’ relationship with the bank lasted for decades, and the first joint account was opened for them in 1993.
By 2010, a year before their father’s ouster, one of the accounts belonging to Alaa Mubarak contained 138 million US dollars.
In turn, the New York Times newspaper, citing the leaks, said that the total number of accounts owned by the brothers Alaa and Gamal Mubarak in Credit Suisse amounted to six accounts, including a joint account worth 196 million dollars in 2003.
Each of the sons’ fathers-in-law also had accounts at the bank worth millions of dollars, as did other businessmen linked to the Mubaraks: whom the Egyptian authorities tried on corruption charges, the newspaper reported.
Through their lawyers, Gamal and Alaa Mubarak told The New York Times that all of their assets had been acquired legally through their “successful professional business activities” and properly declared to the necessary authorities.
They said the leaked account information could contain “some material inaccuracies” but did not elaborate.
The New York Times said that close relatives of Omar Suleiman: Mubarak’s long-serving intelligence chief and a key interlocutor with the C.I.A., opened accounts in 2003 whose balance would grow to $52 million a few years later.
The Cairo Criminal Court in February 2020 acquitted Alaa and Gamal Mubarak of illicit share trading, charges dating back to the sale of Al Watany Bank of Egypt in 2007.
The Economic Court in Cairo in November decided to lift the seizure order on the funds of Gamal and Alaa Mubarak, after approval from the Public Prosecutor.
The President of the Court of Appeals received a letter from the Central Bank of Egypt regarding the approval of the Public Prosecutor to end the effect of the ban on disposition No. 98 of 2020.
This was also in conjunction with Case No. 70 of 2014, concerning money laundering.
The decision includes Alaa Mubarak, his wife Heidi Rasekh, and his son Omar, as well as Gamal Mubarak, his wife Khadija al-Jammal, and his two children Farida and Mahmoud.
The initial ban came from a case that was deemed as profiteering from the sale of Al Watany Bank of Egypt to the National Bank of Kuwait.
It was the only case that put Mubarak’s two sons in prison. They were were acquitted on all other accusations against them after the January 25 Revolution, 2011.
