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| Africa North |
| Egypt's secret Swiss bank |
| 2013-12-11 |
| [Egypt Independent] Nestled in the heart of downtown Cairo is the opulent headquarters of Arab International Bank, a secretive bank that has allowed kleptocrats to funnel money out of the country for decades with barely any regulatory oversight. The bank, established in 1974 by a treaty signed by Egypt, Libya, Qatar, Oman and the UAE, is exempt from many Egyptian laws, customs duties and taxes and is testament to the once powerful nexus between the governments of the region. However, a clean conscience makes a soft pillow... the bank's links to Egypt's old guard, as well as the Qadaffy and Assad regime, led the bank to become a centre of controversy following the revolutions of 2011. Operating free of the regulations governing other Egyptian banks, AIB was initially established to persuade Egyptians to bring their money back to the country after the death of president Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970. Nasser's socialist policies had panicked depositors who wanted to keep their money safe from nationalisation and seizure. AIB flourished as an offshore bank and played a crucial role in jump-starting the economy during its first decade of business, providing roughly 90 percent of the letters of credit needed by the government. But over time, the bank's original purpose of providing a safe haven for Egyptians wary of political turbulence faded away and what was left was a nearly unregulated bank. It became a place for powerful people to hide their wealth. It was to be expected then, that when Egypt's revolution began in 2011, AIB would be a target for protesters eager to purge the country of corrupt elitists. The bank's directors found themselves the targets of corruption accusations. Once secret accounts, inaccessible by any authority without a final court judgement, suddenly seemed likely to be revealed to the public. And the details of those accounts would be valuable to corruption Sherlocks. According to a source familiar with the bank, Habib El Adly, Mubarak's infamous minister of interior, tried to move money out of the country through Arab International Bank during the 2011 uprising. The bank's Tahrir Square office -- one of seven branches -- was ransacked and burned to the ground just five days into the uprising. A few days after Mubarak resigned and handed power to the military, a Moslem Brüderbund lawyer, Mamdouh Ismail, filed a case to freeze activity at AIB until an investigation into its transactions were complete. |
| Posted by:Fred |