CAIRO: A total of 800 million EGP ($102.1 million) were determined to be the amount of tax evasion in the resort city of Hurghada, according to a Wednesday statement by the Red Sea Tax Evasion Investigations department.
The investigations lasted for 10 days; nine tourist institutions were detected to have evaded taxes. A number of night clubs and tourist cafeterias owners were arrested for evading taxes of 30,000 EGP.
Around 248,000 people live in Hurghada, a Red Sea city that mostly thrives on tourism.
On Sept. 29, the taxes authorities detected a total of 40 cases of tax evasion valued at 1.09 billion EGP in 24 hours across Egypt.
On June 27, tax evasion cases valued at 103 million EGP were documented in all of Egypt’s 27 governorates.
According to a Finance Ministry statement in February, Egypt’s tax revenues do not exceed 15% of the country’s GDP.