State Security Prosecution ordered on Sunday imprisoning a Suez governorate official and two other defendants for four days pending investigations for being charged of bribery.
The official was arrested on Friday while receiving a bribe from a constructor for issuing illegal licenses, according to a statement on Saturday by Egypt’s Administrative Control Authority (ACA).
ACA investigations said that defendants are accused of leaking sensitive information regarding portions of land costing EGP 188 million.
The official is facing charges of using his power to issue illegal licenses to build and allocate quarries in exchange of bribes.
The two other defendants include the mediator and the constructor.
The Partners for Transparency (PFT) NGO estimated that nearly EGP 140m was wasted as a result of corruption in the month of August only, including from embezzlement, bribes, and waste of public funds. The report highlighted corruption incidents related to the Ministry of Finance.
Also in August, Alexandria’s deputy governor was arrested on charges of bribes. She reportedly accepted bribes from businessmen in exchange for not implementing decisions to remove unlicensed or encroaching buildings on state property or exempting them from paying fines for those infringements. According to a state-media report published after her interrogation, the crimes have led to the waste of an estimated EGP 10m.
Last December, a corruption case related to the State Council occurred, in which three officials in the purchasing department were arrested in possession of large sums of money and gold that they received as bribes. The report referred to the State Council officials’ case as “one of the biggest corruption cases in Egypt.”
