AN independent MP denied on the second day of probe by the State Security Prosecutor on Thursday that he had taken bribes from a businessman to help him get a company licence. "I have been doing my job as a lawyer, and got money from the businessman as fees to work officially to gain him a licence for a travel company," MP Talaat el-Sadat, nephew of late Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat, told the prosecution. He added that he had forwarded a proxy from the businessman Ezz Eddin Metwali to be his lawyer in all cases before the nation's courts. On Wednesday, the prosecutors had decided to release el-Sadat on an LE10,000 bail, which means that there could be a case against him. The MP's immunity was lifted by the People's Assembly (the Lower House of Parliament) at the request of the Ministry of Justice in order to attend the probe. He could be dismissed from the House if indicted over bribery. Metwali, the businessman, had filed a report against the lawmaker accusing him of getting LE150,000 to get him a licence for a tour company. El-Sadat was imprisoned for one year by a military tribunal in 2008 for saying that not a single bullet was fired by former president Sadat's bodyguards during his assassination in 1981 to protect him. However, his membership in the Parliament was not revoked. Meanwhile, the Commercial Prosecution appealed a ruling to jail an MP for two years for smuggling mobile phones into Egypt saying, the sentence should have been firmer. "Yasser Salah's ruling was appealed. He deserves a harsher sentence to be a model against corruption," a legal source said.
