Hussein Salem

Hussein Salem (11 November 1933 – 12 August 2019) was an Egyptian businessman, co-owner of the East Mediterranean Gas Company (EMG), and ally and advisor to former president Hosni Mubarak. He was also the chairman and CEO of HKS Group, a hospitality company that operates Maritim Jolie Ville Resort in Sharm El Sheikh. He was described as "one of the most secretive businessmen in Egypt", Per Suisse secrets held accounts at Credit Suisse for years, even after he had been publicly accused of bribery.

Early life and education Salem was born on 11 November 1933 in Sinai Peninsula, Egypt. Records of the Egyptian Administrative Control Authority indicate, however, that he was born in the Helwan suburb of Cairo, although al-Ahram Weekly states the latter location was actually Salem's father's birthplace. His father, Kamal el-Din, worked as a school teacher, but died of typhoid fever during Salem's childhood. Afterward, his family moved to an apartment in the Korba area of Cairo's Heliopolis district.

His mother, Hosnia Tabozoda, who was of Turkish origin, encountered great difficulty providing for her children with her late husband's pension, forcing Salem, the eldest of his two siblings to become the family's main provider. He also had five half-siblings from his father's first wife (Hosnia was his second wife), but was not responsible for them, most of whom were older than Salem. Although it has not been proven, he allegedly has Bedouin origins. Some sources say this was a rumor Salem allegedly spread in order to help him secure future business deals with the Bedouin tribes of the southern Sinai Peninsula. The only known relation Salem had with the Bedouin was through marriage; his half-sibling Samiha married into the Abaydah tribe of Ismailia and Sinai.

Career

Gamel Abdel Nasser era

Egyptian intelligence in Baghdad During the early 1960s Salem landed a job as the branch director for the Arab Company for External Trade in Casablanca, Morocco which paid per month.

According to Ibrahim Yousri, Salem gained Howeidi's trust primarily because he was able to regularly provide Howeidi with useful intelligence due to his connections with business circles in Iraq which would have otherwise been difficult to attain through the Egyptian embassy. Amin Yousri claims Salem cultivated good relationships with other Egyptian embassy employees by helping them buy Mercedes vehicles at low interest rates offered by the Iraqi Central Bank. Despite his relative success in Baghdad, Salem did not find his work there particularly fulfilling and requested Howeidi a number of times for transfer to Europe where he said he had "friends" who could help him start a private business. Instead, Salem was sent on ambassadorial missions to Arab States of the Persian Gulf. There he succeeded in establishing his own personal networks that would later become useful during his future business ventures in those states.

ABC News ran a televised documentary in early March 2011 about what it described as corruption that was built in the Camp David Accords and American military aid to Egypt. The network highlighted what it called the role of Hosni Mubarak, Mounir Thabet (Suzanne Mubarak's brother) and the late Field Marshal Abu-Ghazalah in ETSCO's illegal ventures. The aforementioned men received millions of dollars by maintaining an operation filled with illegal commissions, bribes and bidding violations. Salem paid an $8 million fine to The Pentagon in 1984 to settle the case. However, Amin Yousri would later discover through a memo sent from the Egyptian embassy to the Foreign Ministry in Cairo that Salem actually paid the Pentagon a much larger figure than was publicly announced. The memo mentioned that Salem's lawyers reached a $60 million settlement with the US government. A former partner in ETSCO who was also a CIA agent, Edwin Wilson, told ABC that Salem was a "front man" for Mubarak, according to anonymous employees.

The local Bedouins who lived along the southern Sinai coast privately criticized Salem for ignoring their community by not building any projects in the local areas. Members of the el-Tor local council complained that his operations further marginalized the Bedouins by not contributing to their welfare, increasing their sense of marginalization. Abdel-Moneim Said agreed, stating "Salem did not contribute anything that benefited ordinary people in the governorate." In 2002, Said claimed that after the local government constructed a strip-like "Walk" adjacent to the Jolie Ville Hotel intended for locals to open business along, Mubarak ordered the governor to hand it over to Salem.

Revolution and trial

Flight to Spain and arrest

Salem fled Egypt on 3 February 2011 during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 to Spain, a country in which he held dual citizenship. A warrant for his arrest was issued by Interpol in May 2011. He was later arrested at his home in La Moraleja, Madrid, Spain on 14 June by Spanish authorities on separate Spanish charges. Salem was accused by Egyptian authorities of corruption on charges he illegally gained public funds by obtaining a monopoly on the sale of gas to Israel, and as a result, squandering $714 million in public funds (independent experts believe the amount squandered is much higher) by selling Egyptian natural gas to Israel at below market prices. Additionally, Egyptian investigators alleged that Salem was permitted by former President Mubarak to buy a large piece of valuable land on the Red Sea coast for development from the Egyptian government at a large discount. In exchange, prosecutors allege that Salem gave Mubarak and his family five luxury villas worth about $4.5 million, including a 161,000-square-foot seaside estate in Sharm el-Sheikh.

Trial in Egypt and extradition fight Salem's trial on the charges related to his sale of gas to Israel at deflated prices began in Egypt on 3 August 2011 in absentia. In March 2012, the Spanish National Court ruled that Salem and his son Khaled Salem should be extradited to Egypt to face charges. Then in June 2012, the Cairo Criminal Court found Salem, in absentia, and former Petroleum Minister Sameh Fahmi guilty and sentenced them each to 15 years in prison.

In 2016, Salem signed a deal to make it possible for him and his family to return to Egypt without the risk of facing prosecution. The deal required that Salem give up 75 percent of his wealth. Several wealthy businessmen had fled Egypt after the uprising in order to avoid the corruption charges. There was a wide effort for reconciliation with these businessmen and the deal with Salem was part of it.