Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | 9 July 2015
Nizar Manek and Jeremy Hodge discuss their investigation into the scope and set up of Egypt’s special funds.
Journalists Nizar Manek and Jeremy Hodge conducted an extensive investigation in 2014 of Egypt’s government agencies and Central Bank that revealed $9.4 billion in unaccountable state-operated “special funds,” or al-sanadeeq al-khasa. These special funds first became widely discussed in the aftermath of the January 2011 revolution, but their size and administration had remained unclear.
Revelations about the size of these slush funds are particularly timely following Egypt’s highly-touted economic development conference in March 2015 and the government’s appeal for more foreign investment. Incorporating these funds into the state treasury could reduce Egypt’s $32.38 billion budget deficit and provide greater fiscal security. However, the ambiguity surrounding the scope and purpose of these funds shows how entrenched official corruption and opaque state accounting is in Egypt.
Rachael Hanna interviewed the journalists about their investigation into the scope and setup of Egypt’s special funds.
(1,867 words)
http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/?fa=60660