CAIRO: Five high-ranking officials of the Ministries of Agriculture and Housing were accused of corruption and embezzling more than 51 million EGP ($6.52 million) of public money, Youm7 reported.
Three officials from the Ministry of Agriculture were charged Sunday with corruption and wasting 34.6 million EGP ($4.4 million) of the public money.
The three accused occupy high-level positions in the General Authority For Reconstruction Projects & Agricultural Development, affiliated with the Ministry. Per the investigations, the defendants, including a woman, did not collect money due from an association called Adllia to the authority.
Nile Delta’s Menoufia governor Hesham Abdel-Basset referred two officials from Ministry of Housing branch to the prosecution for stealing 16.8 million EGP ($2.38 million) of public money.
Following a report conducted on eight projects of sanitation and feed water networks, offered for public tender, it was revealed that the accused embezzled the public money.
Former Minister of Agriculture Salah Helal has been held on remand pending investigations over accusations of bribery; he and three others face accusations of requesting and taking bribes for facilitating the sale of 2,500 acres in Wadi al-Natroun city in Delta’s Beheira Governorate, according to a statement from the National Security Prosecution.
The former Minister of the cabinet was arrested in September after submitting his resignation. On Sept. 13, President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi said that “the state will not allow stealing one pound… and there is no room for corruption.