European court declines to lift asset freeze on Egypt’s Mubarak, family

A European court on Thursday upheld a freeze of the assets of Egypt’s former president Hosni Mubarak, his family, and other regime officials, imposed after his 2011 ouster.

The Luxembourg-based General Court of the European Union upheld the Council of the EU’s March 2011 decision to freeze the assets, including those of Mubarak’s wife, and his sons, his sons’ wives, and others in his inner circle.

The move followed a Cairo criminal court initial ruling to freeze the assets of Mubarak and his family in March 2011.

Mubarak, who resigned on 11 February 2011 following weeks of protests, was later charged in several corruption cases. He was acquitted in almost all of them.

In September 2018, Egypt’s Court of Cassation rejected a request by Mubarak’s lawyer Farid El-Deeb to reinstate his and his sons’ political rights, which they were stripped of after their conviction in a corruption case in 2015.

They had each received three-year jail sentences and hefty monetary fines after being charged with embezzling 125 million pounds from public funds for the maintenance of presidential palaces to use for their private residences.

The European court said that the individuals whose assets were frozen had asked for it to be annulled “arguing that there is no legal basis for them, that the judicial proceedings in Egypt do not respect the right to an effective remedy, and the presumption of innocence protected by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and that the Council infringed the criteria laid down by the decision, the rights of the defence and the principle of proportionality,” according to the court statement.

Source: Ahram Online