Egypt’s Ezz Gets Jail Term and Fine for Money Laundering

Egyptian businessman Ahmed Ezz was sentenced to seven years in prison for money laundering and fined 19.28 billion pounds ($3.2 billion), Cairo’s criminal court said today.

Ezz, a leading member of ousted president Hosni Mubarak’s now-defunct National Democratic Party, was first referred to the criminal court in November. He was charged with laundering 6.4 billion Egyptian pounds that he allegedly raised through illicit profiteering and the illegal appropriation of public funds, the court said in a faxed statement, citing Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud, Egypt’s prosecutor-general.

Ezz, now in Tora Prison in southern Cairo, was dismissed in May from his position as chairman of Ezz Dekheila, a subsidiary of Ezz Steel. (ESRS)

To contact the reporter on this story: Salma El Wardany in Cairo at selwardany@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tarek El-Tablawy at teltablawy@bloomberg.net