Egypt

OCI reaches settlement with Egypt govt, travel ban on Sawiris lifted

Ahram Online

Orascom Construction Industries will pay LE7.1 billion (approx. $1bn) in settlement over its tax dispute with the Egyptian government

Nile Towers, headquarters of OCI (Photo: Reuters)

Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) said in a statement on Tuesday it has reached a settlement over its tax dispute with the government, prompting prosecution to remove travel bans imposed on the company founder and CEO.

The company will pay the government LE7.1 billion (approx. $1 billion) in ten instalments during the 2013-2017 period.

Accordingly, the prosecutor-general lifted the travel ban imposed on OCI's founder Onsi Sawiris and its CEO Nassef Sawiris. The prosecution said it removed the travel ban after receiving settlement documents from Egypt's tax authorities, Al-Ahram's Arabic news website reported.

OCI, Egypt's largest listed firm, was charged with evading $2 billion of taxes on the 2007 sale of its subsidiary Orascom Building Materials Holding (OBMH) to cement giant Lafarge on Egypt’s stock exchange.

As per the settlement, OCI will begin by an initial payment of LE2.5 billion by mid-May, LE900 million by December, six equal installments of LE450 million and two final installments of LE500 million in 2017.

The settlement was based on the originally disclosed tax claim by the tax authority of LE4.7 billion, which includes accrued interest and delay fees, according to the OCI statement.

OCI insisted on its original position that it had not violated any laws. It said it was faced with two choices, to either enter into a legal battle with the government or make the payment to the government.

"[OCI's] board and management concluded that a prolonged legal process would not be in the best interest of the company's stakeholders, including its 45,000 employees in Egypt, who represent 50 percent of the group's employee base," the company statement read.

The company also said that in conjunction with the settlement, the Egyptian Tax Authority "has determined that there was no tax evasion by the company and is exonerating management and the company from any wrongdoing related to the transaction."

In 2007, OCI listed its cement subsidiary OBMH in the stock exchange for just a few months in order to benefit from the tax exemption Egypt made to deals made on the stock exchange. Accordingly, the $12 billion sale of OBMH to Lafarge was not subject to taxes.

OCI's parent company, Dutch-listed OCI N.V., said it would supply its subsidiary with the required funds for the tax settlement through intercompany loans.

In January, OCI announced it would end its Global Depository Receipts (GDRs) programme in the London Stock Exchange as the company planned to relocate from Cairo to Amsterdam under the auspices of OCI NV. Holders of the firm's ordinary Egypt-listed shares had the option of taking cash or OCI NV shares.

Also on Tuesday, OCI announced a consolidated net income for 2012 of $259.5 million, representing a 62 percent drop from 2011.

via english.ahram.org.eg

Hamilton woman deported to Egypt

CBC, Hamilton

Wafaa Abdou boarded a plane Saturday night after weeks of campaigning by her family and friends to keep the mother of three in Hamilton.

“We still haven't received any calls,” said her husband, Ian Wilkie. Abdou is set to move in with her mother in Cairo.

'We're hoping to get her back as soon as possible.'—Ian Wilkie, husband

Wilkie, who is from Hamilton, met Abdou in Egypt over a decade ago. The two were living in Syria in 2011 when that country's civil war broke out, and they fled to Canada to settle in Hamilton with their three children — Fatima, 6, Yusuf, 8, and Zaynab, 11.

A Canadian citizen, Wilkie said he tried to sponsor his wife's immigration immediately. They were told to seek refugee status instead, which Wilkie has said was bad advice. The process eventually led to a Jan. 14 appointment in which Abdou was interrogated and told her claim had been denied.

“Our family has been disrupted and torn apart,” Wilkie said. “We didn't ask for this.”

We don't offer immigration advice: CIC

Citizenship and Immigration officials can't comment on specific cases before the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), Erika-Kirsten Easton, director of ministerial events and media relations, told CBC Hamilton in March.

But as for the notion of Abdou being erroneously advised to file for refugee status, the department “does not offer immigration advice of the kind you suggest,” she said.

Canada's refugee system, Easton said, is “one of the fairest refugee systems in the world. Decisions regarding who is granted refugee status are made “only after a thorough review,” she said. “Due process is diligently followed at every step.”

And unless a spouse sponsors an immigrant, the government does not give more weight to someone married to a Canadian, she said.

“(Citizenship and Immigration Canada) considers all applications in a fair and impartial manner according to Canada's immigration laws and based on the facts of the case.”

'Hoping for the best'

Wilkie told CBC Hamilton that he is currently in the process of sponsoring Abdou back into the country as his spouse.

He says he expects it will take a year to a year and a half for his wife to make it back to Canada.

“We're hoping for the best,” Wilkie said. “We're hoping to get her back as soon as possible.”

via www.cbc.ca

The 'S-Word': Egyptian Movement Takes on Islamic Rule

Excerpt, so read on. 

Al-Monitor, by Ahmed Atteya 

A member of Almaneyoon, holding an ID card with the religion field blacked out, chants against religious discrimination in front of the Alexandria Library, April 27, 2013. (photo by Ahmed Ateyya)

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt — The small group of demonstrators stood silently in front of the Library of Alexandria by the city's Corniche waterfront promenade, carrying flags, banners, and showing their national identification cards to anyone who wanted a closer look Saturday.

 

Curious passers-by noticed that the religion fields in the protesters’ ID cards were deliberately obscured with black markers.

National identification cards have been a subject of controversy for at least a decade.

The state requires citizens to identify themselves in their official identity documents as Muslims, Christians, or Jews. Hundreds of rallies, conferences, and lawsuits have called for obliterating the religion field, or at least for allowing other affiliations to be included.

This demonstration aimed much higher.

"Our goals are not to merely amend the law, or provide a safer haven for religious minorities, but to radically change the Egyptian constitution and completely separate religion and state," explained Ahmed Samer, the founder of the grassroots movement Almaneyoun (The Seculars), which organized the protest.

After 10 minutes of silence, they started chanting: "Egypt is for all Egyptians, Muslims, Christians, Shias, Bahais and atheists. No to the Islamic state. No to religious rule. Egypt is a secular state."

The bold slogans forced street dwellers to stop and listen to the young activists. A few greeted and encouraged them, a few looked at them with disdain, and the majority just marveled at the frankness of the youths’ demands.

Alexandria is the heartland of the Salafist movement that established al-Nour party, the second-most powerful Islamic political force in Egypt.

Saturday witnessed the first demonstration for Almaneyoun in the city.

Two weeks ago, six of their members filed a police report, accusing Salafis of assaulting and chasing them to hinder them from drawing political graffiti. 

"Those who ask us what's your religion. … We are Egyptians just like you," the chants continued.

A group of students from the nearby Alexandria University campus gathered few feet away from the secular group. Provoked by anti-Shariah rhetoric, they started to shout their lungs out in unison: "Yes to an Islamic State … Yes to an Islamic State."

The two competing groups continued in defiance of each other for few minutes, before a man approached the secular group, yelling, "Shut up! What the hell are you saying."

The situation quickly escalated.

Members from both sides almost engaged in a fist fight. Police from the library's security force showed up on the scene, and asked everyone to wrap it up and leave.

At a nearby cafe, secular group members gathered, sipping tea and reflecting on the outcome of the demonstration.

They are university students and young professionals from across Egypt. All had spoken and met with the movement founders in Cairo, but Saturday was the first time many members of different governorates had met each other.

The entire movement is made up of 70 committed activists and a few hundred regular supporters.

"We are not looking for strength in numbers, but rather a strength in principles," Samer said.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/04/egypt-secularism-protesters-identity-cards.html##ixzz2RnCovUKm

 

via www.al-monitor.com

Morsi steps back from confrontation with judges

France 24

A supporter of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi attends a demonstration demanding a purge in the Egyptian judicial system on April 19, 2013. Morsi on Sunday stepped back from a confrontation with the Egyptian judiciary over a proposed new law that would see several thousand judges sacked, proposing a conference to ease disputes.

AFP - President Mohamed Morsi on Sunday stepped back from a confrontation with the Egyptian judiciary over a proposed new law that would see several thousand judges sacked, proposing a conference to ease disputes.

During a meeting with judges, Morsi agreed to host a conference on Tuesday to resolve disagreements over the proposed new law that would lower the retirement age from 70 to 65, affecting nearly 3,000 judges, his spokesman said.

Morsi pledged to "personally adopt" the outcome of Tuesday's meeting and send the amendments to the legislature, Ehab Fahmy said in a televised statement.

Morsi has repeatedly clashed with the courts since his election last June, and his supporters have staged protests demanding the judiciary be purged of loyalists of ousted strongman Hosni Mubarak who was overthrown in a 2011 uprising.

Egyptian courts have overturned several of Morsi's decisions, including a decree to hold parliamentary elections this April and his controversial sacking of a Mubarak-era state prosecutor.

Judges spearheaded a widespread backlash against the Islamist president in November when he adopted wide-ranging powers that put his decisions above judicial review. Morsi has since repealed that decree.

via www.france24.com

Egypt's 'first' no-alcohol resort opens in Hurghada - Economy

I say to everyone his/her own, as long as it is not enforced upon me. 

Ahram Online

The hotel allocates a floor for women only; owner says he is promoting a new type of tourism

Hurghada saw the opening of a no-alcohol resort on Saturday – dubbed by state media as the first of its kind in the Red Sea – allocating an entire floor for women only.

Resort owner Yasser Kamal told state news agency MENA that the decision is not influenced by one ideology or force, but is an attempt to promote a new tourism approach.

"Tourists have alcohol in their countries, and they must find other alternatives in Hurghada for the purpose of diversity," Yasser explained, adding that the hotel is open for all nationalities and both Muslim and Christian Egyptians.

The owner added that only women will be allowed on the top floor of the hotel where female security will be placed.

The opening ceremony included lining up alcohol bottles on a bar and breaking them, spilling the alcohol, to announce the beginning of a new tourism approach under the new administration, the agency reported.

Muslims' holy book, the Quran, forbids alcohol consumption.

Tourism, an important driver of Egypt's economy, has suffered dramatically due to political unrest that followed a 2011 uprising that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak.

Rising fears have peaked since an Islamist government, headed by the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi, was elected to power last June.

This article was published in Aswat Masreya

 

via english.ahram.org.eg

In Cairo, Rethinking the City From the Bottom Up

Click the link at the end of article to continue reading; a very interesting outlook.

NY Times, by Michael Kimmelman 

The old neighborhood of Darb al-Ahmar in Cairo. A result of the revolution has been a frenzy of building, much of it improvised.

CAIRO — The telltale signs in post-revolutionary Egypt are not just the riots and rapes, the mega-traffic snarls and sectarian battles. There is also the highway ramp in Ard El Lewa.

After the revolution two years ago, working-class residents of that vast informal neighborhood, tired of having no direct access to the 45-mile-long Ring Road, took matters into their own hands. In the absence of functioning government, they built ramps from dirt, sand and trash. Then they invited the police to open a kiosk at the interchange.

Even for Cairo, do-it-yourself infrastructure on this scale is unusual. For years, the government of Hosni Mubarak turned a blind eye as millions of poor Cairenes built homes without permission on private plots of agricultural land in places like Ard El Lewa, greasing the palms of bureaucrats for basic services.

But since the revolution, the pace of illegal construction has only exploded, like so much else here. Along with the spread of graffiti and of street vendors clogging the sidewalks downtown, this explosion is either a sign of post-revolutionary populist empowerment or of chaos, depending on one’s perspective. Egyptians seem to be wrestling over which every day.

A struggle — and also a race — pits the forces of collapse against the halting emergence of a new urban class, born in the aftermath of the revolution. Egyptians have long been experts at fending for themselves in a top-down system where the president ruled by fiat and the government was unaccountable. But now they must improvise as never before.

This means that Egyptians are figuring out anew how they relate to one another and to the city they have always occupied without quite fully owning — figuring out how to create that city for themselves, politically and socially, as well as with bricks and mortar. Headlines have naturally focused on the macro-battles, but the bird’s-eye view does not always reveal what is happening at street level, on corners and in neighborhoods, where daily life today means navigating new relationships with fellow citizens and the spaces they share.

As Omar Nagati, a young Egyptian architect and planner, put it the other day: “This was always a revolution about unjust urban conditions and about public space. The ramp is just one example. People now realize they have the right to determine what happens on their own streets, to their own neighborhoods. So there’s a battle of ownership throughout Egypt: over whose space this is, and who determines whose space it is.”

Egypt, it’s clear on the ground, is not just Tahrir Square. Cairo is not everywhere, all the time, in turmoil. The city can surprise you. I recently visited Darb al-Ahmar, where I had been told an outrage was playing out as ruthless developers illegally demolished old houses to throw up cookie-cutter apartment blocks.

“There’s no law enforcement, and there’s so much drama now just getting through the day here, that most people can’t worry about such things,” lamented Yasmine El Dorghamy, the exasperated editor of Al Rawi, Egypt’s heritage review.

 

via www.nytimes.com

Egypt court turns down Mubarak's release request

 

(Photo: Amr Nabil, AP)

USA Today

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's state news agency says a court has turned down deposed president Hosni Mubarak's request to be released from prison pending an investigation into corruption charges.

 

The news agency MENA says the Cairo Criminal Court on Sunday ordered Mubarak to remain in jail for 15 days while the charges are probed.

Mubarak can appeal the court's decision.

The long-time autocrat who was ousted during a 2011 public uprising has spent more than two years in detention without a final verdict in the case alleging that he is responsible for the deaths of nearly 900 protesters during the uprising.

He also has been ordered held in prison on other charges.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

via www.usatoday.com

Activist of Egypt's No to Military Trials group shortlisted for int'l award

Ahram Online, well done, Mona Seif

Egyptian activist Mona Seif of the No to Military Trials Campaign has been announced as one of the three final nominees for the 2013 Martin Ennals Award (MEA) for Human Rights Defenders.

Seif has been a leading advocate against the military trials of civilians since the ouster of long-time President Hosni Mubarak in early 2011.

The nominees for the Geneva-based MEA established in 1993 are selected by a jury of ten rights organisations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, FIDH, World Organisation against Torture, the International Commission for Jurists, Front Line Defenders, International Service for Human Rights, German Diakonie and HURIDOCS.

The two other nominees for the award are founding member of Russia's Joint Mobile Group, Igor Kalyapin, investigating rights abuses in Chechnya, and rights lawyer Mario Joseph from Haiti.

The prize is 20,000 Swiss Francs, given for use in the field of human rights.

The No to Military Trials Campaign, which Seif helped found, started its work in February 2011 when Hosni Mubarak was ousted in the revolution and the military took over power of Egypt. The campaign worked to provide legal and popular support to victims of military trials and their families and later campaigned for the end of the military trials of civilians.

The Cairo Centre for Human Rights released a statement on Saturday declaring its nomination and support of Seif for the MEA.

 

via english.ahram.org.eg

In Egypt, Muslim-Copt Romance Fuels Sectarian Row

The Huffington Post, by Maggie Michael

CAIRO — An alleged romance between an Egyptian Muslim college student and a Coptic Christian man heightened sectarian tension on Friday in a small rural Egyptian town where police fired tear gas to disperse stone-throwing Muslims who surrounded a Coptic church in anger over the inter-faith relationship, a security official and priest said.

The Muslim protesters accuse Saint Girgis Church of helping 21-year-old Rana el-Shazli, who is believed to have converted to Christianity, flee to Turkey with a Coptic Christian man.

Stories of conversions to Christianity or Islam, inter-faith romances and the illegal building and expanding of churches have caused a series of deadly sectarian incidents in recent years. Since Islamists rose to power after Egypt's 2011 uprising that forced out longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak, Christians have grown more fearful of intimidation and violence from fellow Egyptians, especially ultraconservative Salafis.

The alleged romance has been fueling sectarian tension for nearly two months in Wasta, a rural town in Beni Suef province, about 95 kilometers (60 miles) south of Cairo.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Wrapping Up Egypt--For Now

The Huffington Post, by Rick Steves

As you can tell by the flurry of posts, my 10 days in Egypt have inspired me to write. I've had an amazing experience here. My open letter to President Morsi actually earned me a reply from his assistant, who ensures me they are trying and that they appreciate the caring candor of this series on their country. I leave Egypt both exhilarated and exhausted from all that I've learned.

While travel to Egypt comes with plenty of uncertainty, one thing is sure: If you travel thoughtfully, you'll be charmed by a warm welcome from beautiful people.

I have no plans to write a guidebook or lead tours to Egypt. Others do that far better than we could with our Europe focus. But I'm excited about returning in the next season to produce two, possibly three, episodes for public television. While I set out to scout for two shows, it'll be very tough to show what I want in two 3,400-word scripts. But making a logical structure for three different shows will be a challenge. Perhaps Ancient Egypt (light on Cairo with Abu Simbel), Cairo (light on ancient sites), and Highlights of the Nile (Alexandria, Cairo, Luxor, and the cruise to Aswan). But a tighter two-show plan--Ancient Egypt and Highlights of the Nile--would be stronger.

While traveling in Europe, I enjoy meeting countless Americans and fans of my TV series and guidebooks. While the political craziness has dented tourism across the board here in Egypt, there are plenty of visitors...but almost no Americans. In 10 days in Egypt I met exactly one person who recognized me (and was a public television supporter)--a Sufi Muslim from Toronto. Photo by Trish Feaster (for her Egypt blog, see http://thetravelphile.com/).

By the way, I purchased a Sony RX100 camera just before leaving (at $650, it's about the most expensive of the little pocket cameras). It slides like an armadillo into my pocket when not in use. I generally just shot on automatic but found the shutter-priority mode handy, too. It has incredible light sensitivity (I rarely used a flash and shot a lot at night). And its brain is mind-blowing. I like it a lot. My partner, Trish (a better photographer than me--you can see her art from this trip at www.thetravelphile.com), uses one, too.

Staying at the Winter Palace in Luxor (for the price of a basic hotel in London) you live like a king. I was even assigned my own butler. Photo by Trish Feaster.

I have to admit, I was pretty pampered on this trip. To both stay safe and get the absolute most value out of my time, I hired Tarek Mousa, who runs Egypt and Beyond Travel (www.egyptandbeyondtravel.com) to set up this trip. We brainstormed possible itineraries for the 10 days. He met me at the airport in Cairo and had hotels, a car, and local guides working with me each day. I went out a lot on my own and felt comfortable. But from a sheer efficiency point of view, with the language barrier and the complexities of post-revolutionary life in Egypt and real issues of safety, I was glad I worked with Tarek to create what was essentially my own private tour.

Tarek Mousa, of Egypt and Beyond Travel

Now, after getting used to a world where I routinely find tiny pieces of stone in my food and am hob-knobbing with people with foreheads bruised from the intensity of their prayers, I fly to the Holy Land for 10 days split evenly between Israel and the West Bank, Palestinian Territories, or Palestine--depending on your politics. This promises to be an equally stimulating and rewarding travel experience. I hope you'll stay tuned as I report on what I learn there, here on my blog.

Photo by Trish Feaster.

via www.huffingtonpost.com