CAIRO: A court upheld a ruling on Tuesday that invalidates the sale of state land to Talaat Mostafa Group for the developer’s Madinaty project, and said that the government must put the land up for public auction.
The Supreme Administrative Court dismissed the challenge presented by the Ministry of Housing’s New Urban Communities Authority (NUCA) and TMG on a previous court ruling to invalidate the contract of state land sales for the $3 billion Madinaty project.
Hamdy El-Fakharany, who filed the initial case against Madinaty and state actors, says that the court’s decision leaves no more room for the government to go around the ruling.
TMG’s legal advisor, however, said Tuesday’s verdict was “of no real legal effect” on the firm or its new contract. “This lesson is over, this chapter is closed,” Shawky El-Sayed told Reuters.
Egypt’s Cabinet had decided to scrap the original deal and reallocate the land directly to TMG with the same terms under its right to act in the national interest, Reuters reported. The cabinet has said it would pass legislation to end ambiguity about land sales after a parliamentary vote on Sunday.
El-Fakharany said that if the Madinaty contract was not annulled as ordered by the court, he will file a case immediately against the minister of housing and the head of NUCA. Refusing to abide by a court ruling is a crime, El-Fakharany said, that is punishable by dismissal from office and imprisonment.
El-Fakharany denounced the state’s attempts to circumvent the verdict by amending the contract with TMG, adding that Tuesday’s verdict makes it illegal for the government to go through with the new contracts and that the city council refuses this solution.
The only acceptable action by the state now is to annul the contract with TMG and sell the land in a public auction, he said, adding that if the land is sold in public auction, that would equal around LE 40,000 for every Egyptian. “Why does the government insist on giving this money to only one person or company?”
Acitivst Karima El-Hefnawy attended the court ruling session and said that the verdict serves the Egyptian people.
“If the verdict is executed, the Egyptian people will recover billions of dollars that were robbed by the owners of these companies who bought the land at extremely cheap prices,” she said. “If we had a government that cares about its people, this money would be channeled into services for the people like health, education, housing.”
El-Hefnawy said the verdict would be a precedent for numerous similar contracts. Already, Palm Hills Development faces similar legal action for land bought directly from the state.
“This verdict gives us hope that the land of Palm Hills and other land that was sold based on corrupted direct sales rather than public auction at fractions of their real prices could be restored to the Egyptian people and resold at their actual prices,” she said.
A similar case raised against PHD, which also demands the annulment of a state land sales contract with Egyptian developer, was discussed in Tuesday’s court hearing but adjourned to Dec. 14.
PHD’s attorneys presented a demand to the judge to transfer the case to another court based on their claim that the case does not fall under the jurisdiction of this court and on the Madinaty verdict, which they interpreted as biased.
“The court is not neutral-minded about this issue and the verdict is pre-determined,” PHD’s attorneys told the judge.
El-Hefnawy, on the other had, said that the firm’s attorneys made this demand fearing the same fate as the Madinaty verdict.
“We are against this demand because each case has its own circumstances and the judges have the right to rule in similar cases because we do not question the integrity of the judicial system,” she said.
Supporters of Hamdy El-Fakharany organized a protest outside city council after the verdict, protesting the direct sales of state land to investors at prices considerably lower than market value.
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Karima El-Hefnawy in the protest.
