CAIRO // Egypt's former tourism minister was sentenced to five years in jail yesterday on corruption charges.
Zuheir Garranah, who was sentenced along with two businessmen, was charged with misuse of public funds totalling 303m Egyptian pounds (Dh187m) after authorising the sale of state-owned land for well below the market price.
He is the second Mubarak-era minister to be jailed for corruption, as part of a sweeping investigation into corruption by the country's new military rulers.
Garranah was convicted of ordering the sale of 305 million square metres of land - some of it oil bearing - to the businessmen Hisham al Hazeq and Hussein Segwani for $1 per square metre for tourism projects.
He was detained on February 17, less than a week after a popular uprising forced Hosni Mubarak to step down and hand power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.
On Thursday, a court sentenced the once-feared Egyptian interior minister Habib al Adly to 12 years in prison for corruption.
Al Adly, who ran Mr Mubarak's security services for more than a decade before the strongman's overthrow in the face of 18 days of mass protests, was convicted of money laundering and illicitly enriching himself while in office.
