Egyptian businessman Hussein Salem died Tuesday in the Spanish capital of Madrid at the age of 86, his daughter Magda said, without giving further details.
Salim, who holds dual Egyptian and Spanish nationality and is best known as the Egyptian gas export engineer to Israel, fled to Spain during the January 25, 2011 revolution, and then faced several charges of graft and wasting public funds related to the plan to sell Egyptian natural gas to Israel.
He was arrested under an international warrant in 2011 in Spain, where he fled after the January revolution in his country that toppled Hosni Mubarak's regime, before a Spanish court decided to release him on bail of five million euros.
An Egyptian court sentenced Salem in absentia to seven years in prison and fines totaling more than $ 4 billion in 2011 after he was convicted of money laundering and graft, but he reconciled with the state in exchange for dropping those charges.
The reconciliation process began in March 2016, after the government accepted Salim's offer to transfer ownership of 78% of his financial assets to the government in exchange for allowing him to return to Egypt without risk of prosecution.
The Egyptian government reconciled several issues of graft and profiteering (mostly with businessmen of the regime of ousted President Hosni Mubarak), following the amendment of the penal code passed in March 2015.
According to researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Oussama Diab, the value of property acquired by the Egyptian government as a result of the reconciliation process does not amount to more than 20% of Salem's wealth.
In December 2018, Hukoomi recovered LE 30 million, an asset that was concealed by the CEO of a company owned by businessman Hussein Salem in South Sinai.
The last appearance of Salem in Egypt was in March, in the Naama Bay area of Sharm el-Sheikh in South Sinai.
Immediately after the death of Salem, the mark # Hussein_Salem came in third place in the Egyptian trading list on Twitter.
Balash gloating in the man! |
Believe it #music_pic.twitter.com/xOkvCx1RIC - ☀☀☀☀☀ (@ shamsshams0) August 13, 2019 |
#Hussein Salem |
I am Spanish |
The tag was not without tweets sympathetic to Hussein Salem and calls for mercy, calling him a national businessman.
We are to God and to him we return .. God's mercy from the preservation of the homeland and maintained his secret until his death .. |
The hero # Hussein_Salem in the protection of God ... |