CAIRO - In response to the American threats to cut aid to Egypt in the wake of foreign aid being given illegally to some NGOs, the Salafist Sheikh Mohamed Gabriel has called upon the Government, Parliament and the ruling Military Council to stop accepting American aid. Gabriel recently appeared on a satellite channel, claiming that he is able to collect $1.3 billion – the same sum as that given annually to Egypt in the form of US aid -– from the Egyptians in just one night, without any need of foreign help. The call made by Sheikh Gabriel to renounce US aid has been reiterated several times by different bodies in response to the repeated American threat to halt the aid, whenever the US tries to impose certain conditions on Egypt for accepting it. Some experts even argue that this aid serves American, not Egyptian, interests. The National Salvation Government of Kamal el-Ganzouri has applied to the World Bank and other international institutions for loans to help the economy. Some experts warn that these institutions will only offer Egypt huge loans if it accepts harsh economic conditions that could affect the subsidies on fuel and other basic commodities, causing more suffering to most Egyptians. Strangely, all this is happening while the Government hasn't been taking any serious steps to recover the money stolen Mubarak, his family and other members of his corrupt regime; nor has it confiscated their possessions. What is more amazing is the discovery of $9 billion, deposited in the Central Bank in the name of Hosni Mubarak, as the Central Bank's Governor, Farouq el-Oqda, has confirmed. This money was donated to the ex-president by Kuwait in the early 1990s. Why has el-Oqda never spoken about this money before, if it was donated to Mubarak in his former capacity as president? And why can't the ruling council and the Government use this enormous sum of money, instead of constantly depleting the nation's foreign currency reserves and seeking loans from international institutions? Why was this money never mentioned in any State budget? Why, for decades, were successive governments never informed of its existence? The fact that some NGOs received foreign aid for political goals, while many billions of dollars were deposited in the Central Bank in the name of the president, when the cash really belonged to the State, shows that Egypt suffered from a lack of transparency and discipline for many years. In post-revolution Egypt, supervising institutions, such as the Central Auditing Agency and Parliament, should firmly perform their role of supervising both NGOs and the State's various institutions, including the presidency.
