Was the government's fight against corruption part of a well-organised policy, or more of an occasional policymakers' whim, asks Gamal Essam El-Din It was a year of high-profile corruption scandals that continued to make headlines into December. Some were an extension of cases from 2004; some were brand new. All rang alarm bells. While corruption scandals in 2004 were primarily confined to banking and agriculture, 2005 made clear that the phenomenon had permeated Egyptian society as a whole. This, as many observers would agree, showed that the proliferation of corruption scandals are primarily the result of a historical absence of any obvious sense of urgency over the issue from Egypt's own politicians, and the weak performance of anti- corruption watchdog institutions like the People's Assembly. The media establishment might have been the hardest hit by corruption scandals this year. Abdel-Rahman Hafez, the long time chairman of the state-owned Media City, was charged with embezzling LE3.2 million of the city's funds, wasting another LE50 million, and causing losses estimated at $18.8 million. The losses came after a contract was signed to broadcast the Egyptian satellite channel in the US without properly studying the matter. Hafez also signed another contract with businessman Ihab Talaat, co-owner of the Egyptian Arab Company for Advertising Media, granting his company exclusive concession to be the sole advertiser on local TV channels and Nile TV. By virtue of the concession, Talaat's company was given 15,200 advertising minutes at a 55-60 per cent discount, in clear violation of Media City's regulations. Although the Media City scam was exposed, most believe it came too late. If the charges are true, Hafez's shady practices date back to the days when he was a protégé and close associate of Safwat El-Sherif, the former information minister and current NDP secretary-general and Shura Council chairman. At the time, Hafez was politically immune to any crackdown, but the tables turned after El-Sherif left the information ministry and the Media City's losses and financial malpractice became impossible to hide or ignore. In the housing sector, Esmat El-Taher, chairman of the 6 October City Council, was arrested after being charged with receiving a hefty bribe -- a Mitsubishi Lancer -- for awarding a contractor a bid for the construction of a sanitary drainage project. During an investigation, the contractor said that in addition to the car, he gave El-Taher more than LE200,000 in kickbacks. El-Taher is just a drop in an ocean of housing sector bribery crimes. According to Edward Ghali El-Dahabi, the newly elected chairman of the People's Assembly's human rights committee, bribery has flourished in the housing sector in recent years. "The major reason," Ghali said, "is that because of the lax implementation of the law, many government officials have come to believe that a bribe is just 'legitimate handouts.'" Corruption in the housing sector has also taken an international dimension. London was the site last week of the trial of Mamdouh Hamza, a famous Egyptian contractor and owner of one of the largest engineering consultancy firms in the Middle East, on charges of soliciting the services of an unspecified number of British bodyguards to assassinate four Egyptian public figures, including former Housing Minister Ibrahim Soliman. In the outgoing parliament, several leftist MPs were unable to open housing ministry corruption dossiers. According to Ghali, "the chronic lack of transparency and the unlimited powers of cabinet ministers will not allow us to measure the scale of corruption in the ministry. This will happen only after Soliman leaves his post." This week's cabinet re-shuffle did indeed remove Soliman from his post. But even before that occured, corruption in the housing sector was in the spotlight again. Last week, a number of senior officials in Alexandria governorate's housing department were arrested, facing charges of receiving as much as LE15 million in bribes and kickbacks from contractors, in exchange for granting them demolition and building licenses. This was nothing compared to corruption in the banking sector. On 17 December, Prosecutor-General Maher Abdel-Wahed referred businessman Magdi Yacoub and two leading officials at Banque Du Caire to trial. The two face charges of misappropriating LE1.9 billion in funds in return for hefty commissions and bribes from Yacoub. The case was the latest in a five-year-old series of banking sector scandals, the most famous of which has come to be known as "the loan deputies case", in which five former MPs were convicted of obtaining almost LE1.5 billion in loans from corrupt banking officials. The agriculture sector has also seen its fair share of corruption busting. "The major reason," Ghali said, "is that officials at this ministry receive poor salaries, though they are tasked with supervising projects estimated at billions." As a result, he said, agriculture has become fertile ground for breeding corrupt officials. There have been at least 10 high-profile corruption scandals at the agriculture ministry in five years, the highest rate of any ministry or sector in Egypt. Many believe that former NDP secretary-general Youssef Wali, who was responsible for this sector for 25 years, was the major reason for the record. Wali was fired from his position only after his legal consultant was caught red-handed while receiving a LE1 million bribe from an agricultural investor. On 17 September, a re-trial of Youssef Abdel-Rahman, the former chairman of the Principal Bank for Development and Agricultural Credit (PBDAC) and Wali's right-hand man, opened. Abdel-Rahman was sentenced to seven years in jail last year, but after a successful Cassation Court appeal, a re-trial was ordered. Abdel-Rahman faces a record 16 counts, ranging from abuse of power and profiteering to misappropriation of public funds (costing the state treasury almost LE20 million in losses) and faking official documents, to importing carcinogenic pesticides and toxic chemicals. Ahmed El-Naggar, an economist with the Al-Ahram's Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, believes a lack of political reform is one of the primarily drivers of corruption. "The lack of political reform and the fact that senior officials, like the NDP's Wali and El-Sherif, were left for extended periods of time in their high-level posts meant that myriad forms of corruption and cronyism came to dominate the scene." In its latest table, Transparency International (IT), a Berlin-based anti-corruption watchdog, said the level of corruption in Egypt had improved from "highly acute" to "rampant." Egypt's score on TI's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) improved from 1.1 in the late 1990s to 3.3 in 2003. In 2004, however, TI ranked Egypt 77th out of 146 surveyed countries. El-Naggar believes that "rampant" is not good enough. This state of affairs, he argued, is the result of too many of the ruling elite, especially those in the NDP, entering politics to get rich rather than to govern. This elite, he explained, has created wide scale patronage networks in which the well connected appoint their relatives to significant public posts. El-Naggar does not have high hopes that the new parliament will stand up to corruption because the majority is still in the ruling NDP's hands. The end of rampant corruption, he said, lies in a new constitution that would curtail the powers of the president, redistribute them more fairly across the board, emphasise that senior officials do not remain in office for long periods, and ensure rotation of power. Without all this, El-Naggar concludes, the wheels of corruption will keep turning.
