British Foreign Secretary William Hague has offered to send a lawyer into Egypt, to help probe claims that former President Hosni Mubarak supporters have stolen and deposited several assets in Britain.
Hague made the offer when he met Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi for the first time, after a 6 month investigation by BBC Arabic, the Guardian and al-Hayat newspaper revealed that millions of pounds worth of assets of former Mubarak officials had yet to be frozen in Britain.
These included luxury houses and registered companies in wealthy London areas of Chelsea and Knightbridge, as well as one member being allowed to set up a UK-based business, despite being named on a British Treasury sanctions list.
Assem al-Gohary, head of Egypt's Illicit Gains Authority, said,
Hague made the offer when he met Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi for the first time, after a 6 month investigation by BBC Arabic, the Guardian and al-Hayat newspaper revealed that millions of pounds worth of assets of former Mubarak officials had yet to be frozen in Britain.
These included luxury houses and registered companies in wealthy London areas of Chelsea and Knightbridge, as well as one member being allowed to set up a UK-based business, despite being named on a British Treasury sanctions list.
Assem al-Gohary, head of Egypt's Illicit Gains Authority, said,
"The British government is obliged by law to help us. But it doesn't want to make any effort at all to recover the money. It just says: 'Give us evidence'. Is this reasonable?"Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt responded by saying,
"It is crucial that the recovery and return of stolen assets is lawful. It is simply not possible for the UK to deprive a person of their assets and return them to an overseas country in the absence of a criminal conviction and confiscation order."Also discussed by Hague and Morsi were the possibility of extradition requests, including that of former Egyptian Investment Minister and nephew of the former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Yousef Boutros-Ghali. He has been tried in absentia in Egyptian courts for abusing authority and squandering public funds and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.