Egypt’s top taxman probed over bribery
In recent years, several officials have been convicted in anti-graft swoop
Cairo: Egyptian prosecutors on Saturday opened an investigation with head of the country’s taxation department over bribery allegations as the government of President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi keeps an inexorable anti-graft clampdown, legal sources said.
On Friday, officers in the state anti-corruption watchdog, the Administrative Oversight Agency, arrested Abdul Azeem Hussain and three others on suspicion of receiving bribes from clients in illegal deals.
The suspects arrived early on Saturday in a police car for an interrogation at a prosecution office in the Cairo suburb of the Fifth Settlement, the sources added.
The investigation was opened on an order from chief prosecutor Hamada Al Sawy.
Hussain was appointed in the post in December 2018 and had his one-year term renewed in late 2019.
Al Sissi has vowed relentless fight against corruption since he took office in 2014. Several state officials have since been arrested and put on trial on corruption charges in separate cases.
In 2018, the then governor of the Delta province of Menufia Hesham Abdul Basset was arrested on charges of taking bribery and wasting public money. A criminal court later sentenced him to ten years in prison after convicting him of graft and influence peddling.
In 2017, the deputy governor of the coastal city of Alexandria, Soad Al Khuly, was arrested on similar charges. She was later sentenced to 12 years in prison. Also in 2017, Egypt’s top appeals court upheld a ten-year jail ruling against former agriculture minister, Salah Helal, who was convicted of taking bribes when he was in office.