CAIRO -- A criminal court convicted former President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday of diverting millions of dollars in public money for his personal use in a case that rights advocates say also could implicate the current prime minister and spy chief in a cover-up.
The court sentenced Mubarak, 86, -- who is living under house arrest in a military hospital overlooking the Nile River -- to three years in prison. His sons, Gamal and Alaa, were each sentenced to four years for their role in the scheme. The court ordered the three to pay penalties and make repayments totaling more than $20 million.
Two years ago, the former president was convicted and received a life sentence in a separate case for directing the killing of hundreds of protesters during the uprising that ended his rule in 2011.
However, the presiding judge acknowledged at the time that the evidence was thin, and an appeals court has ordered a retrial. Mubarak is expected to appeal the embezzlement verdict as well, but the evidence appears far more substantial.
His conviction Wednesday, involving his presidential palaces, is seen as sparing the new government installed by former Field Marshal Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of the potential embarrassment of freeing Mubarak.
El-Sissi, who led the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood last summer, is expected to win an election next week to replace Morsi. El-Sissi has sought to portray his rise to power as an extension of the 2011 uprising against Mubarak, while critics denounce a return to Mubarak-style autocracy.
In interviews, el-Sissi has forcefully vowed not to allow a return of the rampant corruption associated with Mubarak's three decades in power.
Mubarak's conviction turns on a diversion of funds with the complicity of the state-run construction company then led by Ibrahim Mehleb, who is now the prime minister of the government el-Sissi installed.
A former corruption investigator involved in documenting the charges has filed a lawsuit alleging that Mubarak's embezzlement was deliberately covered up by a former chief corruption watchdog, Gen. Mohamed Farid el-Tohamy, a former mentor to el-Sissi whom he has named as chief of general intelligence.
Over an eight-year period ending in 2011, prosecutors said, Mubarak conspired to embezzle more than $17 million by billing lavish personal expenses to the state-owned construction giant Arab Contractors as telecommunications system maintenance.
The court filings named two low-level Arab Contractors employees as collaborators in the fraud, but a preliminary investigation also alleged that Mehleb may have knowingly approved of the diversion, said Hossam Bahgat, a former Egyptian rights advocate and journalist who has reviewed the initial investigation and court papers.
That preliminary inquiry was conducted by Moatassem Fathi, an investigator at the government's Administrative Oversight Authority. In court filings and televised interviews, Fathi has alleged that under Mubarak, the authority's director, el-Tohamy, suppressed the inquiry into the presidential palaces along with several others that might have embarrassed top officials.
Fathi resigned in frustration shortly before the 2011 uprising. Afterward, he won his job back in a court case claiming he had been wrongly penalized by the authority for his corruption investigations, and he ultimately gathered the evidence and testimonies that led to the embezzlement case.
After Morsi was elected president, Fathi filed a legal complaint and gave television interviews alleging that el-Tohamy had covered up corruption investigations. Morsi fired el-Tohamy, and prosecutors initiated an inquiry against him.
But after el-Sissi ousted Morsi, the new government immediately named el-Tohamy to the more senior position of head of general intelligence, Egypt's spy chief. Fathi's complaint was all but forgotten, and he was soon demoted. Recently, he was transferred again to a desk job at the Legal Affairs Department of the Ministry of Trade.
"The political environment under Mr. Mubarak was tough because there was no real political will to seriously go after corrupt officials," Fathi told Bahgat, the former rights advocate, in a detailed report on the case that was published Tuesday in an online publication, Mada Masr. "I thought all of this would change with Mubarak's ouster, but the revolution was not given a chance to govern."
Fathi could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
A Section on 05/22/2014