الموقف المصري

During the past days, the International Center for Investigative Journalists published a set of documents called Pandora Papers, which are more than 12 million documents leaked from law firms specializing in the registration of companies and entities in tax havens.
The investigations were contributed by about 600 journalists from 117 countries around the world, and the documents were sourced from a financial services company and law firms, and shed light on more than 29,000 companies registered in tax havens.
The Pandora Documents Collection is the largest cross-border journalistic cooperation project in history, and includes millions of documents from law firms about the tax havens we’ve been talking about a lot before, and reveals the assets, secret deals, and hidden fortunes of the wealthy – among them more than 130 billionaires – and more than 30 world leaders, fugitives or convicts, sports celebrities and others, as well as judges, tax officials and counterintelligence agencies.
Among these people is King Abdullah of Jordan, who, according to the documents, owns 30 companies registered in tax havens. Through these companies, he bought about 14 properties, including properties in London and California, with a value of 106 million dollars.
Among the other personalities who appeared in the documents directly are Najib Mikati, the current Lebanese prime minister, and Hassan Diab, the former prime minister.
– This is in addition to the political figures surrounding the current Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the President of Kazakhstan, Putin and many other personalities and politicians.
– What concerns us is that there is one Egyptian name – so far – that has appeared in the documents, and he is businessman Magdy Rasekh, son-in-law of ousted President Hosni Mubarak and owner of the famous SODIC real estate development company.
– We will see today through the investigations of the Pandora Papers (specifically an investigation published by the Areej network that you will find in the sources) how the son-in-law of the ousted Mubarak was able to deceive the government and complete his work with it for more than ten years through a company in a tax haven, even though he is convicted of corruption cases that are inferior to the country about a billion fairy?
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What is the relationship of Egypt with these documents?
– Until now, the name of Magdy is well established, Mubarak’s brother-in-law and owner of the SODIC company, and also the owner of the National Gas Company, as a beneficiary partner of another businessman named Essam Kafafi, who has a company registered in a tax haven in Panama called fleet energy.
National Gas is a company founded by Magdy two years after his daughter’s passport in Alaa Mubarak in 1998. One year later, it began taking contracts from the Ministry of Petroleum to deliver natural gas for a period of 20 years to some areas in the eastern region. About a billion pounds.
– Which is the thing that National Gas did, and Magdy Rasekh even filed a lawsuit before the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes against the General Petroleum Corporation demanding compensation for changing gas supply values, a lawsuit that was rejected.
The judicial dispute between the authority and National Gas and Magdy continued until June 2021, which passed when the Public Prosecution referred the case to the felonies and demanded an amount of one billion pounds, which is the value of gas subscriptions collected from 2010 to 2019.
Despite this judicial dispute between National Gas and the government, the Petroleum Authority in 2014 signed a contract with another company for Majdi, a well-established name, fleet energy, which was established in Panama in 2007 to supply 510 thousand metric tons of gasoline and gas oil to the Authority.
In addition, fleet energy was part of a deal between the Authority and the Russian oil company, Rosneft, and obtained a contract according to which it received 1.5 million metric tons of liquefied gas to the Authority.
– I mean, Magdy Raseesh, who was on the government for about one billion pounds, and continued to deceive him in taking government contracts even while the case is working, and the Illicit Gain Device investigates another case, and there is even a final prison sentence for him as well.
– The case in which there was a final ruling in 2016 from the Court of Cassation is the case of Sodic land, in which Magdy was accused and sentenced to 5 years in prison while he was a fugitive, in addition to the former Minister of Housing, Mohamed Ibrahim Suleiman, after accusing him of acquiring tracts of land in the cities of Sheikh Zayed And New Giza at prices below its market value, and this was in collusion with some officials of the New Urban Communities Authority.
– In 2018, he submitted a request for reconciliation before the Committee to Recover the Smuggled Funds. According to Al-Ahram newspaper, SODIC worked alone in a settlement with the Illicit Gain Authority, and committed to paying an amount of 800 million pounds, of which 250 million would be paid in cash, as a payment advance, with the remaining amount being supplied in 4 installments. Over two years, with a total of 550 million pounds, the first installment is due on March 1, 2019 with a total of 169.5 million pounds, the second installment in September 2019 with a total of 169.5 million pounds, the third installment in December 2019 with a total of 105.5 million pounds, and the fourth installment in December 2020 with a total of 105.5 million pounds.
– The big question mark raised by the appearance of Magdy’s name firmly established in the Pandora documents is how the Egyptian Ministry of Petroleum granted these agreements for the supply of gas and the opening of the Egyptian market to a company in which the businessman Magdy Rasekh participates, ostensibly represented by another fictitious person named Essam Kafafi.
– At the same time that Magdy Rasekh was sentenced to a final sentence of 5 years in prison as a result of his conviction of profiting and willful harm to public money in the Sodic land case, and at the same time that Magdy has a working case before the Cairo Criminal Court, accusing him and others of refusing to supply the dues of the Egyptian General Authority The value of gas collected from consumers is estimated at about one billion Egyptian pounds.
– The last thing in Magdi Rasekh’s story is that in February 2021 the Public Prosecution signed a reconciliation settlement with Magdy Rasekh and Muhammad Ibrahim Suleiman, worth 1.35 billion pounds in some cases, and it is clear, of course, from the extent of corruption that we talked about that this is a small number in exchange for what Magdy Rakesh won.
– It is enough just that we know that it is Sodic, and that there is a lot of talk about it being a well-established person who still owns shares in it subcontractingly. The sales of the previous year amounted to 1.1 billion pounds, and this is because it is one of the largest real estate development companies in the country, and by the way, it is still working with the state and acquiring lands New from the Urban Communities Authority.
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What do we see from all this?
Magdy’s story is well established, like other symbols of Mubarak’s corruption, in which they were reconciled without any transparency, such as Hussein Salem, Rashid Muhammad Rashid, Ahmed Ezz, and all these people who returned to their business again after they paid sums to the state despite the final judicial rulings that were imposed on them.
– The size of these people’s profit from corruption during Mubarak’s days was very large, in the case of Magdy Rasik, for example, the arrears that existed from 2011 worth one billion pounds. If the state took them at least at that time, the value of this money would have been 2 billion at the rates of inflation that we have seen in the past ten years.
– If the supervisory authorities in Egypt knew what Magdy is doing, they are firm and silent with regard to oil and gas contracts in particular, then this is a catastrophe, and if they do not know, then there is a greater disaster that needs a big move, response and clarification.
The documents are not only about matters that we have, on the contrary, all over the world, they have begun to resonate with promises of investigations from Britain and others, and this is the least that should happen to us.
In general, Pandora’s documents shed light once again on tax avoidance practices, which still cost the state a lot of tax revenue, and the state continues to deal with the same people and companies registered in tax havens without any consideration for many needs, the most important of which are the final court rulings on people This is, and here we must repeat what we said in the story of Rashid Muhammad Rashid’s corruption and his return to the scene through the same door of tax havens.
– We are here in the Egyptian position. We have written more than once about the danger of tax avoidance and the registration of Egyptian companies in tax havens, because the profit transfers that are used in Egypt on paper for the sake of it waste a lot on the government. Until now, there are no serious moves by the government to end this problem.
While we realize that this is a global problem, Egypt will not be able to solve it alone, but at least government agencies cannot enter into investment partnerships with companies in tax havens, or give these companies government contracts because this is literally a direct waste of taxpayer money in Egypt.
– We must also know that the means used for this type of tax evasion are fraud and are not sufficiently criminalized by law, but in the end, their use hinders the achievement of justice and tax integrity, and over time it works to erode your tax base, which the government is working to provide.
– Registration of companies in tax havens guarantees in one way or another the confidentiality of the owners’ information, and I have the possibility to register them under fictitious names, and they are used as places for the fictitious transfer of profits for the purpose of evading the tax authorities located in the countries where their financial profits are achieved, as in the case of Egypt with Magdy Rasekh, Hussein Salem and Gamal Mubarak Rashid Mohammed Rashid and the rest of the long list de.
– And here in the case of Magdy, we have seen that he continued in the Egyptian market despite all the cases, corruption and rulings for more than 10 years without anyone discovering or talking about this, and all through tax havens.
– Even away from the corruption of the symbols of the Mubarak regime, countries, but also the money for this corruption, when I worked and made profits, the state could not benefit from it as little as tax collection because it was registered outside Egypt.
We hope to see serious moves from the government in the file of tax havens, and every day in the world in developed and developing countries there are moves to tighten the screws on companies registered in tax havens.