In a first, the Appeals Court refused on Saturday a financial reconciliation proposal presented by former President Hosni Mubarak and his sons Alaa and Gamal, in the case publicly known as the ‘presidential palaces case.’
In 2016, the Cassation Court upheld the granting of a release to Alaa and Gamal, after rejecting an appeal by prosecution authorities against their release. At the time, the court refused the appeal on grounds that the two defendants completed a strict three-year prison term in the case.
In May 2015, the Cairo Criminal Court sentenced Mubarak and his sons to three years’ imprisonment, on charges of seizing public funds by embezzling money specified for the presidential palace.
They were additionally fined EGP 125m, the amount of money seized by the defendants by forging the presidential budget in official statements, and were also forced to pay EGP 21 back to the state.
Saturday’s decision means that both a reconciliation to evade paying the fines, and to cancel the criminal record for the three defendants were refused. Currently the three defendants stand charged as guilty, hence they have a criminal record, which bans them from practicing politics or participating in public life.
Several Mubarak-era businessmen were acquitted or were involved in reconciliation deals with the Egyptian state, after repaying a fraction of the value of the funds they were suspected to have embezzled.
Gamal and Alaa previously walked free, after the Egyptian judiciary acquitted them from other corruption-related cases. Their corruption and luxurious lifestyles and that of their father was one of the reasons why millions took to the streets in 25 January in 2011 in mass protests, ending up in the ouster of Mubarak.
The Mubaraks have made the news several times in the last weeks. On Thursday, The Cairo Criminal Court ordered the release of Gamal and Alaa Mubarak, sons of former President Hosni Mubarak, for a fine of EGP 100,000 each, pending investigations, following their trial detention in the case dubbed as ‘stock market manipulation.’ On the same day, The Criminal Court accepted also an appeal to change the bench by the two defendants in the same case.
