CAIRO - Lucky people close to influential officials in the dissolved government of Ahmed Nazif were able to buy vast tracts of land belonging to the Ministry of Agriculture on either side of the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road, for ridiculously low prices. They were meant to reclaim this desert land for cultivation. However, reclamation is expensive, so they used the land for other purposes. These fortunate people only paid LE5,000 (about $850) per feddan (acre) of land. They've been making billions by building residential compounds for the rich and tourist resorts on the land, which is part of 6th October Governorate, Egypt's second biggest governorate. There have been several attempts to establish another governorate, which would be known as Wadi el-Natroun Governorate. These fortunate people could also have built on the Cairo-Alexandria Agricultural Road, the Cairo-Suez Desert Road or the Western Desert Highway, but they chose to steal land on the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road, as it would prove the most attractive choice for tourists to come and stay and for wealthy Egyptians to buy property. This land has done very well on the Stock Exchange. For example, shares in Palm Hills, a real estate company owned by former Minister of Transport Mohamed Mansour and former Minister of Housing Ahmed el Maghrabi, increased in value from LE5 billion in 2005 to LE35 billion (about $6 billion) last year. It was Speranza, a Spanish consultative bureau, which won the tender to turn the Cairo-Alex Desert Road into a free highway without any intersections. Apparently, Speranza won the tender after the Spanish government promised to provide a soft loan to finance the project, with an estimated cost of LE1.6 billion. During the previous government, many people wondered why work on this highway progressed so quickly while work on the other roads mentioned above was moving so slowly. According to Al-Akhbar semi-official newspaper, there was only enough money for the Cairo-Alex Desert Road project, near which the Palm Hills, 'Al-Reef Al-Uropi' (European countryside) and al-Solimania resorts are flourishing. The Ministry of Agriculture estimates that the State has lost LE37 billion because of all the land that has been stolen beside the Cairo-Alex Desert Road, with 28 businessmen benefiting from building luxury housing and tourist villages, instead of reclaiming the land. According to the same newspaper, former Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif wasted even more money, when he ordered former Minister of Transport Alaa Fahmi to construct a tunnel to serve the Smart Village, although there was already another tunnel only 400 yards away.
