Ex- Egyptian finance minister brother Jailed For Smuggling Egypt antiquities

AFP

A Cairo criminal court docket sentenced the brother of a former Egyptian finance minister to 30 years in jail on Saturday for smuggling antiquities out of the country, a judicial supply said.

Raouf Ghali, the sibling of Hosni Mubarak-era finance minister Youssef Ghali, changed into sentenced to 30 years in prison and fined 6 million pounds ($380,000) for his role in trafficking artefacts out of Egypt to Italy.




He had 3 accomplices, such as Italian ex-honorary consul to Egypt Ladislav Skakal, who turned into sentenced in absentia to fifteen years in jail and a million pound fine.

Skakal now faces 30 years imprisonment if apprehended by using Egyptian government, having previously been sentenced to 15 years in absentia in January as a part of the identical case.

Egypt has asked that Interpol issue a crimson notice towards the disgraced former honorary consul.

The stolen artefacts included almost 22,000 golden coins, 151 miniature figurines, 5 mummy masks, 11 pottery vessels, 3 ceramic tiles courting to the Islamic duration and a wooden sarcophagus.

Italian police discovered the loot in a diplomatic transport container en course from the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria to Salerno in Italy in 2017.

Egyptian security groups also exposed valuable portions hidden in Skakal's Cairo domestic and in a bank protection deposit box.

The stolen antiquities were again to Egypt in cooperation with Italian authorities in 2018.




Also sentenced in the case have been Egyptians, both given 15 years in jail and one million pound fine.

Looting and trafficking of Egypt's cultural heritage increased in the course of the the popular uprising that ousted former president Mubarak in 2011 and at some point of the years of political turmoil that followed.

Last year, the golden coffin of a Pharaonic priest that were stolen amid the tumult changed into unveiled in Cairo after it was repatriated from the United States.

In current years, Egypt has sought to promote its archaeological background in a bid to revive its vital tourism sector.

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