Is Housing Minister being investigated for alleged corruption? Gamal Essam El-Din tries to find out Back from a long summer holiday, Housing and New Communities Minister found himself at the centre of a maelstrom of controversy catalysed by ardent press coverage of alleged corruption at his ministry. Suleiman was back in his Cairo office this week, despite claims by an opposition newspaper that Prosecutor-General Maher Abdel-Wahed had asked People's Assembly Speaker Fathi Sorour to lift Suleiman's parliamentary immunity (the minister is also an MP for Cairo's downtown Al- Gamaliya district) -- so that he could be investigated on charges of corruption and abuse of power. An independent paper, meanwhile, claimed that the Administrative Control Authority (ACA) -- the government's corruption watchdog agency -- sent officers to Suleiman's office last week to uncover evidence of wrongdoing. Several satellite television channels added fuel to the fire with additional claims that Abdel- Wahed had ordered that Suleiman be barred from leaving the country. On 18 August official cabinet spokesman Magdi Radi denied that Suleiman's office had been inspected, or that the minister had been barred from travelling abroad. Suleiman is still part of the government and is performing his job as usual, the spokesman said. Abdel-Wahed, the prosecutor-general, also denied submitting a request to Sorour for Suleiman's parliamentary immunity to be revoked. Suleiman, meanwhile, was quoted in the press as saying that it was not his job to deny allegations of corruption. "Denying these allegations is the cabinet's job," said Suleiman, who had been vacationing at the North Coast resort of Marina. Independent MP Adel Eid described the controversy surrounding Suleiman as symptomatic of "the chronic lack of transparency... and integrity in the political system, the unlimited powers of cabinet ministers, and the poor performance of corruption watchdog institutions, especially the People's Assembly." The accusations, after all, have surfaced before. In January 2003, leftist MP Kamal Ahmed strode into parliament with two large bags in his hand, claiming they were filled with documents incriminating the minister. Another firebrand leftist MP -- El-Badri Farghali -- also alleged that Suleiman's brother-in-law had been monopolising the implementation of Housing Ministry construction projects for years, to the tune of LE8 billion. According to Farghali, Suleiman had also used his position to obtain five immense residences in some of Cairo's most luxurious districts. Suleiman later responded to Farghali's attacks via a TV talk show, saying he was not so naïve as to award his brother-in-law the lion's share of the ministry's construction projects. The brother-in-law, Diaa El-Mouniri, was in fact summoned by the prosecutor-general's office last week, as part of an investigation based on allegations that he had received bribes from several contracting companies in order to help them obtain construction contracts from Suleiman's ministry. A disgruntled ministry accountant named Mohamed Khattab had also contributed to the morass by writing an as yet unpublished book detailing alleged corruption at the ministry. Weighing in at almost 300 pages, the so- called Black Book -- which was obtained by Al-Ahram Weekly -- contains a trove of documents that appear to reveal a great deal of abuse of power, as well as under-the-table business deals between Suleiman and El-Mouniri. According to Abdallah El-Sinnawi, editor of the Nasserist Al-Arabi newspaper, Suleiman had dismissed Khattab from the ministry, only to later bring him back under one condition -- that he refrain from publishing the Black Book. The major catalyst for the current Suleiman brouhaha, however, was certainly the 12 July arrest in London of Mamdouh Hamza, the head of Hamza Associates, one of the largest engineering consultancy firms in the Middle East. According to press reports, Hamza was charged by Scotland Yard with soliciting the services of an unspecified number of Egyptians residing in Britain to assassinate four Egyptian public figures: Suleiman; Sorour; parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal El- Shazli; and Chief of Presidential Staff Zakaria Azmi. And while the Egyptian media has, almost unanimously, risen up in defence of Hamza, charging that he must have been set up in some way, some opposition and independent papers pointed the finger at Suleiman himself, suggesting he might have had a role in entrapping Hamza in London. In any case, the sudden flurry of anti-Suleiman allegations was the last thing Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif's newly appointed cabinet needed. Eid, for one, described "the proliferation of these allegations [as] an undoubtedly severe shock for the new government".
