Swiss attorney general to discuss Mubarak's frozen funds

Swiss attorney general to discuss Mubarak's frozen funds
Attorney General Michael Lauber is due in Egypt this weekend to confer over former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's frozen funds, which amount to $695 million.
2 min read
14 January, 2016
Hosni Mubarak's sons, Alaa and Gamal, completed three-year sentences for multimillion-dollar corruption convictions [Getty]

Switzerland's attorney general will visit Egypt over the weekend to discuss hundreds of millions of dollars worth of frozen funds belonging to the family of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

Following the 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak after three decades in power, Switzerland reportedly blocked around 700 million Swiss francs ($695 million) in accounts used by the strongman and his relatives.

Attorney General Michael Lauber "will meet several Egyptian representatives" on Saturday, according to his spokesman Andre Marty.

In December 2013, the Swiss newspaper Sunday Morning reported that $300 million belonging to Mubarak's sons, Alaa and Gamal, were frozen by Egyptian authorities in Credit Suisse accounts.

The amount accounted for around 40 percent of the Mubarak family's frozen assets, the paper said.

On Saturday, Egypt's top appeals court upheld a three-year prison sentence for Mubarak and his two sons for corruption.

It was not immediately clear, however, how long Mubarak would remain in detention.

Both of his sons were set free in October with time served taken into account.

Mubarak has spent most of his time in a military hospital since his arrest in 2011, months after his removal from power in a popular uprising.

In May, a court sentenced him and his sons to three years for having embezzled 125 million Egyptian pounds ($16 million) from funds meant for the maintenance of presidential palaces.

They were fined that same amount and an extra 21 million Egyptian pounds.