Former prime minister Hesham Qandil and six others were handed travel bans on Wednesday, according to state-owned Al-Ahram. Qandil, along with former Minister of Housing Tarek Wafiq and others, had their assets and money confiscated by order of the Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat and were given travel bans in connection with a corruption case, scheduled to have its next hearing on Thursday. The case involves 205 feddans of land in Cairo's Fifth Settlement valued at around EGP 1bn that Qandil's predecessor Kamal Ganzouri had confiscated from a real estate company. Qandil allegedly disregarded Ganzouri's decision and proceeded with handing the land over to the company. On Tuesday the North Cairo Criminal Court upheld a decision to freeze the assets of prominent Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist leaders, including the Brotherhood's Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie, deputy Khairat El-Shater, and various other prominent members of the Freedom and Justice Party and Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya. Earlier this month Qandil's former advisor Omar Al-Zuhair was released on bail pending charges of retaining cabinet documents after ending his service. He had been arrested earlier along with 13 Muslim Brotherhood members as part of a wide-scale crackdown against members of the group, which has resulted in the arrests of members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups and supporters of the ousted president.
