The government has challenged the ruling of the International Arbitration Center in Washington that was passed in June as regards the Siag case, stipulating that Egypt pays Wagih Siag LE 700 million in compensation. Dr. Ahmed Kamal Aboul Magd, a member of Egypt's defense team before the arbitration, said that Egypt used a French legal expert named Ian Paulson to challenge the ruling, pointing out that Egypt's chances are very good. He said: “The defense is preparing a memorandum with the reasons for the challenge to be submitted in a month from now at the most, although we have 120 days from the date of the ruling. We are going to refute the ruling, and we are examining similar challenges that the Arbitration Center of the World Bank had considered before.”
He said the defense team is comprised of Baker and McKinsey Law Office, the State Cases Authority and the French lawyer Paulson that we are drawing on his extensive experience in arbitration. He added: “We are currently reviewing the case documents that exceed 8,000 pages, and we are taking our time studying them to make sure the memorandum is as should be.” He considered the talk about Egypt's weak position in the case as ‘defeatism', saying: “If we have succeeded in reducing the compensation in the last round from US$ 332 million to US$ 74 million in addition to the interest, it means we are in a good position. Let us be constructive.” Wagih Ylli Siag and his mother Cloreda Videchi had filed a lawsuit before the International Arbitration Center of the World Bank in June 2007, after the Egyptian government withdrew from him a plot of land in Taba in the 1990s under the pretext of national security, because Siag had an Israeli company as a partner. The Egyptian courts considered the case and ruled in favor of Siag, but the government refused to implement the ruling.
