24 France

Maram Mazen, April 15, 2017

To Cairo (AFP) - When Hassan wanted to start a new real estate project in Egypt without paying bribes, employees in the local administration threatened to stop the procedures, but went so far as to say that the plot of land on which he wants to build is archaeological treasures.

The man could only submit to their requests. "Every procedure costs money," said Hassan, who preferred to use a pseudonym.

Corruption is a daily scourge that Egyptians face. It is not uncommon for them to pay bribes in government departments to obtain official papers or permits. They also used to put money in the hands of the policeman to avoid traffic violations.

It is a situation in some cases due to the very low salaries, sometimes reaching 1,200 pounds (about $ 60), which is the minimum wage for employees in Egypt. But the phenomenon of corruption also exists at the highest levels.

The protest against corruption was one of the reasons why millions of Egyptians took to the streets in 2011 and brought down Hosni Mubarak, who was accused of profiting, along with his sons, from rampant corruption.

Hassan believes that since the revolution against Mubarak, nothing "except the faces" has changed.

- Fixes awaited -

Despite this, several corruption cases received great media attention, and were eventually referred to the judiciary.

Since he came to power after the overthrow of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in 2013, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has been stressing that fighting corruption is one of his priorities, stressing that "no one is above the law."

In April 2016, a former Minister of Agriculture was sentenced to 10 years in prison for taking a bribe.

Almost every week, the Administrative Control Authority announces the arrest of two employees accused of corruption, including two employees of the Ministry of Endowments who were arrested last January on charges of receiving bribes in the process of selling lands.

A judge in the State Council committed suicide last January after his arrest in a financial corruption case.

The Administrative Control Authority rejected AFP's requests to interview its officials.

Walaa Jad al-Karim, an official at the non-governmental organization Partners for Transparency, acknowledges that "the political discourse is very strong with regard to corruption, as the president always talks about it."

However, he adds, "However, this should be reflected more quickly in legislation."

Experts are calling for reforms related to freedom of access to information, protection of whistleblowers, independence of oversight bodies, and a greater role for civil society.

- Silenced civil society -

Pending these reforms, Egypt lost two points in 2016 compared to 2015 on Transparency International's corruption scale, which measures perceptions of corruption in the government sector.

Kinda Hattar, consultant for the Middle East and North Africa administration at Transparency International, said that this decline is due to "the restrictions imposed on civil society and government oversight bodies with regard to talking about corruption."

These are restrictions revealed by the case of Hisham Geneina, former head of the Central Auditing Organization. After Geneina made press statements about the extent of corruption in the country, he was dismissed from his post and sentenced to a suspended year in prison, as he was accused of publishing false news that included an "inflated" cost of corruption.

Geneina said at the end of the year 2015 that the cost of corruption in the government sector amounted to 600 billion pounds (more than 60 billion dollars according to the exchange rate at the time) based on the sum of the estimates contained in the reports prepared by the Central Auditing Organization between 2012 and 2015.

Osama Diab, a researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a non-governmental organization, says, "Geneina crossed a very important red line, as the independence that was granted to the Central Auditing Organization was always conditional that the data and numbers it obtained remain confidential."

As for the impact of corruption on Egyptians, it takes many forms.

Hattar points out that "Egypt is known for the collapse of buildings over the heads of its residents due to the building's violation of technical conditions." She explains that manipulative contractors do not hesitate to pay bribes to employees to buy their silence on building violations.

There is another common image of corruption. After Dania paid a fine of 500 pounds (about 27 dollars) because she was driving with an expired driver's license, she received valuable advice from an officer: “If you had given 50 pounds (approximately $ 2.7) to the policeman at that moment, you would not have to pay the fine. “.