CAIRO - An administrative court is expected Tuesday to issue its final ruling on the status of Cairo's controversial Madinaty development project, run by a detained real estate tycoon. "The final ruling on how to deal with the project and its shareholders will be issued on Tuesday (tomorrow)," a judicial sources said. Madinaty comprises 65 per cent of the investments of the Talaat Moustafa Group (TMG), the largest listed real estate company in Egypt whose former board chairman Talaat Moustafa is serving a 15-year sentence for ordering the murder of a Lebanese singer. TMG's $3 billion Madinaty project, making up the bulk of its land bank, has been at the centre of a dispute since September 2010, when a court upheld a ruling that scrapped the sale of state land to TMG because it was not publicly auctioned. The flagship developer posted a 48 per cent drop in first-quarter net profit last week on the back of a 51 per cent drop in new real estate sales.
