CAIRO - Thanks to the recent revolution, a powerful anti-corruption agency has come to the fore after 36 years in the wilderness. The Ill-gotten Gains Authority was revived when its army of senior judges, led by Chief Justice Ahmed Assem el-Gohari, began burying their heads in thousands of documents, which suggest that Hosni Mubarak, his family and his close associates illegally amassed vast sums of money. The suspects include the former speakers of Egypt's upper and lower houses of parliament and ex-Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, as well as business tycoons. Although he only assumed office a year ago, el-Gohari has already become very popular, especially after ordering nearly every one of the above suspects to be detained for a further 15 days. El-Gohari was hailed as a national hero by millions of poor Egyptians, when he ordered Mubarak's two sons detained for another 15 days, pending more investigations into allegations of abusing their father's power to make vast fortunes. Unofficial estimates put the Mubarak family's wealth at $40 billion. The former president was booed when he denied on TV the stories about his family owning dozens of villas, palaces and other properties, both here and abroad. The Ill-gotten Gains Investigation Agency was launched in 1975, when Parliament that year approved Law 63, which stipulates that the agency's senior investigators and their assistants should be selected from the chief justices in the Court of Appeal and the Court of First Instance. In its 26 articles, Law 63 explains that the President of the Republic and his family, the Prime Minister and ministers and under-secretaries, governmental officials and employees, the Speaker of the Parliament and its members, local municipal chiefs and their members, board chairmen and members of State-owned enterprises, board chairmen of State-owned banks, village mayors and headmen, and finally city governors should all, every five years, honestly declare their wealth and that of their families. The Ill-gotten Gains Investigation Agency should collaborate with the State-run Administrative Control Agency and the Public Fund Investigation Police whenever it smells a rat in the documents submitted by officials. However, since its creation, the agency has been harshly criticised for belonging to the Ministry of Justice. Critics claim that the agency only ever acted against suspects if it got the green light from the Minister of Justice. These critics deny that the agency enjoyed a powerful, independent role like that of the judiciary. The attack on the agency's integrity intensified under ex-minister of justice Mamdouh Marei, who allegedly abused his power to compel the agency's investigators to discuss their decisions before declaring them. The former minister's adversaries, who belong to the judiciary, claim that Marei forced the agency to overlook suspects with close links to Mubarak and his family. In addition to el-Gohari, Ahmed Shawqi el-Shalqani, who was also the Chairman of the Agency, ought to be highly commended. He frequently clashed with Marei for meddling in the agency's affairs. When el-Shalqani left his post, he said that the former minister's intervention provided fertile soil for corruption to thrive in Egypt.
