CAIRO: Egyptian construction guru Hisham Talaat Moustafa, chairman of Talaat Moustafa Group (TMG), called for the drafting of legislation criminalizing rumor mongering in the Egyptian stock market to protect Egypt’s economy, according to Egyptian news website www.youm7.com.
This comes after widespread rumors circulated and were openly discussed on local satellite channels linking the murder of Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim with Moustafa.
The rumors suggested that Moustafa had paid one of his bodyguards to murder Tamim and then fled the country, but were quickly dispelled when the businessman, who was abroad on vacation with his family, reportedly returned to Egypt to confront the accusations against him.
The rumors, however, had taken their toll on TMG, whose stock traded 14 percent lower on Sunday.
Brokers said that investors were selling the stock at any price even after a company statement confirmed that Moustafa was back to work in Egypt.
Businessman Ahmed Bahgat had also phoned in on the popular daily talk show “Al-Ashera Masaan Saturday night, where the rumors were also discussed, to confirm that he had personally spoken to Moustafa, who was in fact in Cairo.
The murder plot thickened with reports Sunday that Dubai Police have announced an arrest of an unidentified 39-year-old Arab man in connection with the murder of Lebanese singer Tamim, according to The Associated Press.
The police said that he was arrested with the help of Interpol in an undisclosed Arab country a few days ago. His capture was made possible through evidence collected from the crime scene.
Police also added that he had posed as real estate agent to gains access into the singer’s apartment and that he left the country approximately 90 minutes after committing the crime, but gave no further details.
Moustafa reportedly promised to make a TV appearance to dispel the rumors, which observers say were triggered by business rivals to settle scores. As proof, he phoned in on terrestrial Channel One’s morning show “Good Morning Egypt on Sunday.
In related news, editor-in-chief of opposition newspaper Al-Dostour, Ibrahim Eissa, told Daily News Egypt that “the paper was pulled from newsstands probably because of the article about the Suzanne Tamim murder case.
An official at the department for distributing newspapers had told Reuters, “We received orders to ban the distribution of this specific issue of Al-Dostour after it was already printed and a number of copies were shipped in a train to the south of Egypt Saturday evening.
The source continued that he did not know the reason why the issue was banned.
The article in Al-Dostour, however, did not make any mention of Moustafa in the long piece it ran on the back page of its Sunday issue about the murder investigation, referring instead to “a prominent Egyptian public figure with political and financial clout.
Suzanne Tamim was brutally murdered in her Dubai apartment on July 28.
Investigations revealed that disputes began between her and her Lebanese husband and producer Adel Ma’touk eight months after they were married.
Ma’touk had accused her of conspiring with others to murder him on two occasions in Egypt and in Lebanon when they failed to reach a divorce settlement.
According to the Al-Dostour report, a legal brawl between her and Ma’touk over monopoly rights, prompted her to stay in Egypt to escape a Lebanese court ruling in his favor, where she lived like an “empress allegedly under the protection of the “prominent Egyptian figure.
