Zamalek's elected board members headed by Mamdouh Abbbas will now be led by Kamal Darwish after Taher Abu Zaid, the newly appointed sports minister in Hazem Al-Beblawi's ministry, took a highly controversial decision, his second to be exact. First it started with a new law for sports clubs which set an eight-year term as a maximum duration for club board members which was opposed by the Egyptian Olympic Committee which considered it governmental intervention in sports which is not allowed by the International Olympic Committee. Sports activities in general might face an international freeze. Abu Zaid also decided to dissolve the elected Zamalek board due to alleged financial irregularities, shifted all reported misconduct to the general prosecutor and appointed a new board of members headed by Darwish to take over until elections take place. The Ministry of Sports announced that the supposed financial misdeeds of the club included signing a contract with an international sports company for sports attire without the agreement of the ministry as the law states. Moreover, Zamalek signed questionable contracts with the commercials shops that surround it. Furthermore, an undisclosed amount of money has disappeared from the club's treasury. So as soon as Darwish ,who was Zamalek president for many years, took over, he announced in a statement that the club was suffering from a big financial crisis and a number of financial irregularities as it owes LE80 million but that revenues in the coming months would not exceed LE8 million. That is why he asked Zamalek supporters to join hands to rescue the “great club”. He is also studying a number of ways to increase the club's money by using some of the club's resources like commercial shops inside and outside the premises. But Sabri Serag, deputy manager of Zamalek on Abbas' board told Al-Ahram Weekly that all the financial accusations leveled by Abu Zaid were meaningless. “I would like him to do us a favour and shift all such financial charges to the general prosecutor to make it clear who is to be charged. We as a board of members have done nothing wrong. We all worked for the benefit of the club. Firstly, the contract of the sports clothes they are claiming is not legal is meaningless. We sent the contract to the Ministry of Sports more than a month ago but received no answer and the law says if we don't receive a reply ,we take our own decisions and this is what we did.” Serag added that the rent contracts of the commercial shops around the club are all correct. “We worked very hard and succeeded in drawing up new contracts with a raise that was very reasonable.” As to the rumours that the club's treasury was empty, Serag said, “We left everything as it is and we will prove this by our documents. We have asked our lawyer to file a case with all the documented papers we have. We will raise it to the highest levels because we were accused of things we did not do.”
