A Cairo criminal court has dismissed a corruption case against Mubarak-era steel tycoon Ahmed Ezz and the former head of the industrial development authority Amr Assal, removing their names from travel ban list, after the pair reached a financial settlement with the state.
The men had been charged with squandering EGP 660 million of public funds in the case, known in the Egyptian media as the “steel licences case.”
Last month, Egypt s prosecutor-general Nabil Sadek announced Ezz will pay EGP 1.7 billion as part of a reconciliation deal with the Egyptian government.
Sadek, who heads the national committee tasked with recovering funds from abroad, said that the payment includes EGP 600 million of Ezz s funds which have already been recovered from abroad.
The case was the last ongoing criminal case against Ezz, according to legal sources.
Following the 2011 uprising, the steel tycoon was sentenced to prison after conviction of a number of different corruption charges, but most of the verdicts against him were later overturned.
He is the former chairman of Ezz Steel, the largest steelmaker in the Middle East and North Africa, which controls some 50 percent of Egypt s steel market.
