Egypt sentences steel magnate Ezz to 10 years, ex-minister Rachid to 15 years

An Egyptian court on Thursday sentenced steel magnate Ahmed Ezz and former industrial development chief Amr Assal to 10 years in prison and a joint fine of 660 million Egyptian pounds ($110.9 million) for corruption under ex-president Hosni Mubarak.

The court also sentenced former Trade and Industry Minister Rachid Mohammed Rachid in absentia to 15 years and a fine of 1.4 billion Egyptian pounds, his third conviction in as many months.

Shares of Ezz Steel fell 8.9 percent after the verdict and the Egyptian stock market dropped 2.5 percent at 1200 GMT from 1.5 percent an hour before.

The presiding judge said it would be up to Ezz, who was a senior ruling party official before Mubarak’s overthrow in a popular uprising, and Assal to pay the fine between them, representing the total of public money he said they had wasted.

Ezz, Assal and Rachid were all found guilty of collaborating to grant licenses without payment of fees. The judge revoked the licenses.

Rachid, believed to be outside Egypt, was sentenced in July to five years for misusing public funds along with two other business executives; all three were each fined 4 million pounds.

Rachid, who was a regular at the World Economic Forum in Davos and an important face for major grain importer Egypt in the commodities market, also received a five-year sentence in June for profiteering and squandering public funds and was ordered to pay 18.8 million pounds.

He left the country a few days after the eruption of mass protests in January that toppled Mubarak three weeks later.

Ezz, who quit the board of Ezz Steel and its Ezz Dekheila Steel unit in May to fight the charges, has denied wrongdoing.

The ruling can be appealed at the Court of Cassation.

Ezz was a senior official in Mubarak’s National Democratic Party, which was dissolved after the popular uprising that ousted the autocratic president from power in February.

The company’s shares have tumbled 56 percent this year as a crisis in the property industry sapped demand for its products and investors speculated that the charges against Ezz would damage the company’s business.

Ezz Steel had said in March it did not expect the probe targeting Ahmed Ezz to affect its operations.