Egypt refers FinMin’s adviser to court over bribery charges

Egypt’s general prosecutor referred Monday Tarek Farrag, adviser to the finance minister for real estate tax affairs, and three other defendants to the criminal court over bribery charges.

The three other defendants are Mohamed El Razy, head of a property firm Starlight; Amal Abdel Wahab, an inspector in the Egyptian Tax Authority; and El-Nasser Gamal, an accountant.

The prosecution accused the finance minister’s adviser of requesting a bribe of 4 million Egyptian pounds ($220,873) in exchange for services to the businessman.

Transparency International said earlier in January that “corruption levels in Egypt are still high in the absence of a real political will to fight it”, in its Corruption Perception Index 2016.

Egypt ranked 108 out of 176 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2016 with a score of 34 on a scale where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 means very clean.

The score marks a deterioration from the year before when Egypt scored 36 and ranked 88 out of 168 countries.