الموقف المصري

– More than a week ago, Egypt’s Sovereign Fund signed an agreement with a new company called “Bedayat Misr” to develop Bab Al-Azab area in Salah El-Din Citadel to be an integrated creativity area.
– The agreement between the Fund and the company was not as striking as the presence of Rashid Muhammad Rashid, Minister of Industry of the Mubarak regime from 2004-2011, at the signing ceremony as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Bidayyat Company.
– Rashid Mohamed Rashid returned to a company in a “tax haven” that works with the Sovereign Fund of Egypt and in the same previous method that the Egyptian judiciary condemned for smuggling his money and profits, and we will list this in details.
– We will also see with each other how this contract can waste the rights of Egyptians in taxes? How did Rasheed return? What is his new company? And see what is happening in the file of the return of Mubarak’s symbols as a whole? These are the questions that we will try to answer in the context of the post.
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What is the beginnings of Egypt company?
– Bidayyat Misr is a subsidiary of the Sara Group, a company that Rashid Mohamed Rashid operates in Switzerland, and Bidayyat Misr is a branch of it, according to what was proven by an investigation with documents and documents for the platform’s website (you will find the link to the investigation and documents in the comments).
Under an agreement with the Sovereign Fund of Egypt, Bidayat will explore opportunities for cooperation in the development of the historic Bab Al-Azab area in Cairo, and present a study with the aim of turning it into an “innovation center to incubate the creators of the Egyptian youth, and the owners of start-up companies specialized in creative fields, including engineering designs, And the manufacture of furniture, jewelry, and fashion, as well as films and books, until here it can be very ordinary and beautiful as well.
What is not beautiful at all is that the Sara Group is an offshore company, meaning a company in a tax haven that is Switzerland to evade taxes in Egypt. However, the Sovereign Fund signed a contract with it at a time when the government must work to combat tax havens.
It is worth noting that the Egyptian Criminal Court had sentenced Rashid to prison on charges of exploiting influence and illegally obtaining 700 million pounds through illegitimate gain, smuggling it through the “offshore” company abroad, and a list of evidence from the testimonies of witnesses in the same case.
– In it were statements by a source with the Illicit Gain Agency who said that the device tracked the funds belonging to Rashid Muhammad Rashid and proved that they were smuggled outside the country by illegal methods, and confirmed that what was published about his possession of millions in a Swiss bank, were proven by the investigations of the device and accused him at the time of falsifying the financial disclosure report. with it.
– Therefore, I mean, Rashid, who was judged in a case in which part of the ruling was that he has companies in tax havens, the work of another company in a tax haven and back to work with the government is very normal.
– Therefore, not only Rashid returned with a reconciliation deal that did not have any transparency, and a fortune estimated at 4 billion pounds in 2011 in rulings related to it in cases of illegal gain, but he also returned in the same way through a company in a tax haven and worked with the government to take contracts to develop an area, we will pay As Egyptians, the cost of developing it without any rationale or the beginnings of Egypt pay any tax to the country on their profits from this contract, or from any other business.
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How did Rashid Mohammed Rashid return?
After his escape from Egypt in January 2011, Rashid went to Dubai, and then, within years, he was tried in more than one case and was judged by the judiciary in three cases: the case of iron licenses, graft, and embezzlement of public money, and he was convicted of all of them.
The total sentences in the three cases amounted to about 35 years in prison, in addition to financial fines. But during all this period, Rashid’s companies preferred, who increased their market shares during his work as an ordinary minister of labor in Egypt under the management of his sister, Hasna Rashid.
– In November 2016 (the month of flotation), a reconciliation was made with Rashid in exchange for a financial settlement, according to sources, who spoke with Al-Shorouk newspaper, which amounted to 1.6 billion pounds.
Then in 2017, Rashid Muhammad Rashid returned to Egypt permanently and began to work. The interesting story is that when Rashid visited Egypt, he was very close to the ruling family in Qatar and worked as an economic advisor to it, and he held a group of Qatari companies owned by the ruling family.
– Currently, Rashid is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of a large fashion company in Italy called Valentino and the Balmain company in France and these companies owned by Qatar.
– Therefore, I do not know if Rashid’s return to investing in Egypt and winning a development contract from the government’s sovereign fund is related to the reconciliation that took place with Qatar in the recent period or not, but this is information in the context and background.
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What do we see from all of this?
Rashid’s return through a company in a tax haven is not something new and is not needed. The sovereign fund has recently pumped investments in many sectors in partnership with companies registered in tax havens, especially in the education and health sector.
– The fund worked with Hermes in investment and Hermes many companies that it owns or owns shares in them that are registered in 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 such as the Sovereign Fund and the Ministry of Planning cannot enter into investment partnerships with companies in tax havens, or give these companies government contracts because literally this is 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 Rashid Mohamed Rashid.
– Here we must mention that the cost of tax evasion in Egypt is estimated at about 68 billion pounds annually in a study published in 2015, and negligence in combating fraud increases this huge amount of lost money from the Egyptian treasury.
– And Switzerland itself, in which the Rashid company intends to evade its profits without paying taxes, is responsible for 5.1% of global losses resulting from tax evasion, with a total amount of 12.8 billion dollars annually.
Thus, the Rashid Mohamed Rashid Company will be able to easily evade and hide its profits from Egypt, in addition to the fact that by law there is an exemption for the Sovereign Fund and its inter-transactions and the entities fully owned by it from all taxes, fees and the like, to include exemptions and inter-transactions between the Egypt Fund and the sub-funds and companies in which it contributes box.
– We also wrote before about reconciliation with the symbols of Mubarak’s corruption, and how he was in a terrible failure in the process of recovering the money looted by the symbols of the Mubarak regime such as Hussein Salem, Rashid and Youssef Boutros Ghali and others, and how the reconciliation processes with these people took place without any transparency and they returned after Reconciliation is like the case of Rashid again. They work without understanding on what basis the reconciliation took place, and in light of even the conflicting numbers that they paid for the reconciliation.
– Another important thing is the image that we see of the state when it reconciles with one of those who corrupted the economy and established a monopoly on strategic goods such as iron in exchange for money. Which took place over decades at the time of the previous regime.
– Rashid Muhammad Rashid and other Mubarak symbols, and even the children of Alaa and Gamal returned to the square again because there are no real mechanisms to combat corruption, nor is the judiciary able to communicate properly with the investigation authorities in the places where these people smuggled their money to them, like Switzerland or others, so we eventually had to resort to reconciliation without no transparency.
What is also required is a political will for real tax reform in Egypt that will allow us to stop the transfer of profits abroad from companies, and we make laws to fight havens and provide as part of these laws an improvement in the investment climate and facilitation of tax transactions for companies.
Among these tax reforms, for example, is that Egypt must expand the imposition of withholding tax on funds and profits transferred to tax havens until the nature of this transfer is ascertained. And this method is being followed in America, Britain and even less developed countries such as El Salvador, which has imposed an additional withholding tax of 25% on remittances of individuals and companies to tax havens.
– We hope that the government will have serious plans to combat tax havens, and most importantly we have a strategy to combat corruption, in which there will be independence for the judiciary and justice mechanisms that can prevent a repetition of what happened in the Mubarak regime.