Despite government denials, an Egyptian economist says the international community is laundering money in the North African country, and lays the blame on the world as a whole.
“The charges [that money is laundered in Egypt] are like a promotional advertisement among swindlers and smugglers,” the head of the Egyptian Political Economists Society, Ibrahim Al Aisawi, said in response to an international watchdog group’s recent charge that Egypt was not cooperating in the fight against dirty money.
He added that responsibility for the problem lay with the entire international community.
“Money moves both in and out of a country…putting pressure on economic assets and reserves, and…aggravating corruption, which is another problem that should be confronted,” Aisawi said on Saturday.
For his part, banking expert Mohammed Nooriddin pointed out that the Egyptian monetary authorities had created rules and control measures to confront the problem.
“What we need is strict implementation of these rules,’’ said Nooriddin, adding that the most dangerous potential consequence for the national economy was the movement of laundered money in a way he described as “hot money.”
He said “hot money” entered the targeted country and then left, creating confusion in the markets and thereby disrupting them.
Nooriddin said that developing countries were encouraging all types of money to cross their borders due to their economic problems, and said these counties should be helped to fight money laundering by providing them with sufficient resources such as soft loans.
Observers say that money laundering in Egypt occurs in the tourism and hospitality sectors, as well as via the stock market.
An international watchdog group involved in the fight against dirty money recently added Egypt to its amended list of uncooperative countries.
But the Egyptian Ministry of Economy responded by denying the existence of the problem and said Egypt had ended up on the list due to a lack of legislation to combat money laundering.
The ministry said it was embarking on passing a law in the area.
The Central Bank of Egypt on June 7 approved a set of regulations to help banks uncloak money laundering transactions.
The regulations were sent to banks last Thursday, just a few days before the last amendments were made to the watchdog group’s list of offenders. The Cairo-based paper Al A’alm Alyawm cited the central bank as denying any link between the issuance of the regulations and the addition of Egypt to the list of offenders.
