(AFP Photo)
The head of the Egyptian Administrative Supervisory Authority Mohamed Omar Wahby said on Tuesday that frozen assets belonging to the family and associates of former president Hosni Mubarak in the United Kingdom and Switzerland amount to around $934 million.
This figure, delivered by Omar Wahby during his speech at the fourth conference of the Arab Anti-Corruption and Integrity Network in Beirut, is said to be associated with over 200 figures affiliated with the former regime.
The Swiss embassy refuted Omar Wahby’s claim, saying that while investigations were still ongoing there was no way to know for sure how much of the money is linked to old regime members.
“The figure that we have around 700 million Swiss francs,” the embassy said, which amounts to roughly $756m. “This does not mean, however, that the money belongs to Mubarak’s family and associates. Investigations still have to be carried out to prove these funds are linked to the old government.”
The embassy stressed that there are no exact figures regarding the illicit funds.
The state-run news agency MENA reported that Omar Wahby said all measures were being taken to recover the assets.
Omar Wahby said the authority has filed over 2,000 reports of financial corruption to the prosecution and over 700 to the Illicit Gains Authority, MENA reported. He also said that they have no definitive figure regarding the total wealth of the Mubarak family and their associates, although estimates place it between $40bn and $70bn.
The British embassy in Cairo meanwhile confirmed that there are millions of dollars worth of assets which are frozen in British banks under the European Union asset freeze but could not provide an exact figure.
