An Egyptian court on Thursday has sentenced former Housing Minister Mohamed Ibrahim Suleiman, Alaa Mubarak's father-in-law Magdy Rasekh, and businessmen Yahya al-Komi and Imad al-Hazeq on charges of illegally seizing state land and squandering public funds. The Cairo Criminal Court sentenced Suleiman to eight years in prison, according to the state-owned Middle East News Agency (MENA) MENA reported that in the first case, the court sentenced Suleiman and fugitive businessman Rasekh to five years of hard labor and ordered them to repay LE81 million and pay an additional fine equal to the amount they owe. They were convicted of profiteering, squandering public funds and illegal acquisition of state land. The court also sentenced Ezzat Abdel Raouf Abdel Qader, former head of the New Urban Communities for Real Estate and Commercial Affairs Sector, to one year of hard labor and part of the LE81 million repayment and former General Authority for Urban Communities officials Fouad Madbouli, Hassan Khaled Fadel and Mohamed Ahmed Abdel Dayem to one-year suspended sentences on similar charges. MENA went on to say that in the second case, the court sentenced Suleiman on similar charges to three years of hard labor and ordered him to repay LE34 million pounds and a fine equal to that amount. The court sentenced Komi and Hazeq to one-year suspended sentences and fined them LE4 million and LE6.7 million, respectively. The two businessmen were not ordered to repay any money as Komi had previously returned the stolen lands in question during the investigation and Hazeq had paid the price difference of the lands he had been allocated. According to state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper, in the second case, the prosecution charged Suleiman with the illegal acquisition of state land and squandering public funds because he had allocated residential land in the New Cairo district at prices lower than market value to both Komi and Hazeq. According to a statement made by Attorney General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud on Thursday, the total amount of money the defendants have been ordered to repay is around LE2.1 billion.
