Egypt’s Public Prosecution has referred seven senior officials with the Egyptian Company for Data Transfer, We Data, to an urgent criminal trial, on accusations of their illicitly taking EGP 240m from the company’s funds.
WE Data is a joint-stock company in which the state contributes a share. The list of defendants includes two directors from the General Department of Risk, Treasury, Investment and Banking Relations, as well as the head of the External Treasury Department, the External Treasury Supervisor, and three of Heads of the external treasury department.
The charges note that six of the defendants issued orders and instructions to their subordinates, accountants with the Storage Department, to go to the company’s branches to collect the sums in those branches’ safes.
The defendants received sums of money from the representatives of the company’s agents, who wanted to increase their balance and hand them over to the seventh defendant.
The defendants are then said to have deposited these sums in the company’s bank accounts, or handing them over to money transfer companies contracted with the company by their employer to take over the deposit. Once completed, the defendants were able to unlawfully seize the money.
The referral order clarified that the first, second and sixth defendants falsified inventory reports, by forging an incident form for a true event, and hiding the fake incident among other details.
These forms prove the exaggerated truth, and show that false documents were used if their employer wished to view any official documents.
The second and sixth defendants committed fraud in a further inventory report, this time in the form of an electronic document. These took the form of mail messages with the company’s clients, by proving that these seized funds were termed as debts to them that were not paid.
