3 officials jailed for bribery

2008-10-08 21:21

Cynthia Johnston

Cairo - Three Egyptian civil servants were convicted and sentenced to 10 years in jail on Wednesday for taking bribes to facilitate contracts to restore museums and cultural sites, court sources said.

The sources said a Cairo court also gave the civil servants, high-ranking Culture Ministry officials, fines ranging from 100 000 to 500 000 Egyptian pounds, and ordered them to hand over bribe money of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The employees had taken bribes in exchange for help getting contracts to restore sites including two state-owned theatres, Coptic and Roman museums in the northern city of Alexandria, and to build a wall near the Pyramids.

One also took several air conditioning units, rugs and household decorations from the contractors, the sources said.

Roughly 12 million foreign tourists visit Egypt annually to see antiquities including the Giza Pyramids, pharaonic tombs and temples in the south and Islamic and Greco-Roman monuments in northern Egypt.

Tourism is a main source of revenue for Egypt, accounting for 6.5% of gross domestic product in 2007 and directly or indirectly employing more than one in 10 Egyptians.

- Reuters