Well top billing everywhere except Egypt – where it is banned. Its won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance film festival and is grossing very well in France. https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/origin ... ilton.html
It has a Luxor aspect.
It’s the story of an Egyptian property/construction billionaire who had his mistress (an Egyptian pop star) killed by a contract hit man in the UAE, he slit her throat, and precisely follows the facts of the real life Egyptian property/construction billionaire Hisham Talaat Moustafa scandal and his former head of security at the Four Seasons Hotel in Sharm el-Sheikh who did the hit.
Here is the dead girl:
She didn’t want him and her third husband had rejected a huge cash offer from HTM to leave her (some say it was $US50 million but that is hard to believe). So what does a prudent respected Egyptian businessman do in this situation?
Made by Egyptian director Tarik Saleh it was entirely funded by non-Egyptians, Saleh lives outside Egypt and the government refused permission for him to film in Egypt.
HTM was recently pardoned by the President and has announced grand plans for a new Nile side hotel in Luxor on a piece of land whose previous ‘owners’ were alleged to have corruptly acquired it. The previous ‘owners’ have either been overseas since 2011 or acquitted – following initial convictions under the previous government.
Unfortunately the hotel design is typically Egyptian, Pharonic, Stalinist. The Russian tourists will probably like it.
He might be pardoned but he still needs protection and an Egyptian Twitter critic of his pardon was recently rounded up by the Security Services. https://wagingnonviolence.org/2017/07/e ... epression/
Its good that he is a free man and that guilt and embarrassment has never affected either his firm, wealth or the members of his family and several of his siblings are members of Parliament for the Presidents Party. His sister is head of the Parliamentary Tourism and Civil Aviation Committee – which is ‘useful’. His father was for many years a Mubarak Party MP – besides a businessman – and headed the Parliamentary Housing Committee which was ‘useful’ to the type of business he ran at that time.
The Murderer’s brother was also an MP, and ‘hereditary’ head of the Parliamentary Housing Committee whose great claim to fame was a E1 million donation to the Mubarak Party to get them to preselect him for a Parliamentary seat.
There are likely other relatives by marriage in Parliament.
The billionaire murderer was also a Mubarak Party Member of Parliament, the Shura, at the time of the hit. He was initially given the death penalty and on appeal 15 years, and ‘served’ 7 before his pardon – although from 2013 he was in the Al Salam Al Dawli Hospital in a VIP suite as a very sick man. https://www.albawaba.com/entertainment/ ... aat-528740
He was an extravagant donor to Suzanne Mubarak’s many charities http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent ... w-par.aspx and admitted in court to selling the Mubarak boys cheap houses at his Madinaty development. As it turns out the government had ‘sold’ the land to his company at less than full price and a court invalidated the whole project. Luckily a financial ‘settlement’ avoided fraud charges and got it all back on the road for him. Chronicles of the Egyptian Revolution and its Aftermath: 2011–2016 by M. Cherif Bassiouni, p. 386. The author of this book is an expatriate Egyptian and 1999 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize - but alas not highly regarded in Egypt.
Things work 2 ways because at the time of the girl’s murder the Mubarak regime banned press reporting of it and of any allegations HTM was connected to it. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/money/s ... e-1.322545 A bit like what happened after his recent pardon.
The Panama Papers reveal that the Mubarak’s were, through they’re off shore Cyprus companies, significant investors in the murderers company. http://meobserver.org/wp-content/upload ... 15-Y63.pdf so looking after him was in their financial interest.
He has other friends. Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al Saud a member of the Saudi royal family and one of the richest men in the world, a long term close business associate of Rupert Murdoch, was a business partner/investor. https://egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com ... t-bio.html and was welcomed by Mubarak as the biggest investor in the Toshka fiasco. The Prince has great trust in the murderer and recently announced (immediately after his pardon) a major investment in a new coastal resort with HTM. Interestingly the prince is a major shareholder in the world Four Seasons Group – the source of previous HTM building contracts and the contracted murderer. It shows you the connected world of the rich when you know that this prince is a long term close friend of the Prince of Wales and a major donor to his charities. Wales re-opened Talal’s Savoy Hotel – an odd thing to do – during which they kissed. Here is a photo:
There are scores of other photos of them together and he has entertained them a deal at Clarence House and they Polo together. They have established the joint Prince Alwaleed Prince of Wales Fund. A meeting of souls.
(Alas Talal is now detained/arrested by the King of Saudi for corruption so his proposed investment with HTM in Egypt is history. If he is ‘possibly’ corrupt by Saudi standards then he is certainly corrupt by standards of common moral decency. Maybe he will be executed or maybe his close personal friend the Prince of Wales will come to his defense. The Central Bank of Saudi has allegedly frozen $US800 billion of private assets because of corruption/frozen all private jets, so I don’t think that there is going to be new investment into Egypt from that direction for a while. China is also rounding up corrupt businessmen/politicians – and killing them. Looks like a trend – at the moment - in some countries)
The bloodthirsty but incompetent former police officer, Mohsen el-Sukkari, was paid $US2 million (a very big price) to kill his the girl and he got 25 years and is still in jail so I don’t think he has any friends and I wonder whether he has now to repay the 2 million to his boss because the murder was particularly incompetent -– and his boss got arrested because of his lack of skill. It would be an interesting test case on Arabic breach of contract law. How he didn’t get a pardon but his boss did is a mystery.
Why both were prosecuted in Egypt for a murder in the UAE is also a mystery that would only make sense to an Egyptian judge with a brain. Usually you get convicted in the jurisdiction where the crime was committed.
HTM is now back full time and in good health running his very large company whose share price has soared since his pardon. Standing for Parliament again won’t be a problem because his family has always combined politics with business and the Parliament is full of other ‘soiled’ people.
Interestingly, immediately prior to his Presidential pardon he made a major investment in the President’s New Administrative Capital – something few others have done – but probably a wise investment in his future. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... der-pardon
A profile of the company: http://venturesafrica.com/construction- ... fa-family/. They are big in sea side resorts but it might pay to give their Four Seasons Hotel at Sharm a wide berth if you are young and attractive and don’t want to have sex with a gross Egyptian billionaire. If you are interested in investing in Egypt real estate his company owns/develops Rehab City (no pun intended) so discounts might be available if you have an attractive young female relative to ‘offer’ as a ‘deposit’. Here he is after years in a hospital suite – based on his weight when he was ‘released’ he wasn’t as sick as the courts, under the current government, thought when they let him out of jail to go to a hospital VIP suite for 4 years to save his life from unspecified disease:
Given his track record I reckon he can only do well in the Luxor environment – although those local businessmen who don’t do what he wants should hire bodyguards and keep their daughters away. His hotel could be called “Death on the Nile”. The ownership would probably suit Russian tastes – although guests should be careful not to resist the sexual advances of its owner. An aluminum neck brace could protect from a slit throat.
The family is connected and the HTM’s brother married into the infamous Egyptian Diab family (arrested various times for having machine guns in the house, a major client of that Panamanian tax avoidance firm, a purchaser of government land for 7% of its value, owner of Masry newspaper (which never criticized Mubarak) and business associates of the ‘usual suspects’ like EFG Hermes and Mallawany and Hassan Mohamed Hassanein Heikal) at a $US3 million wedding ($US23,000 per guest) in Florence.
The Diabs have also been subject to travel bans, asset freezes and charges. Guess this marriage ensures their complimentary DNA of aggression, violence and crookedness is suitably inbred. The Diabs were Mubarak mates and did very well out of that. They also own Pico oil and gas, the largest local oil/gas company, which has done very well out of government granted concessions and tax holidays. https://english.alarabiya.net/en/media/ ... Italy.html
http://www.aswatmasriya.com/en/news/details/17394
https://panamapapers.investigativecenters.org/egypt/
The Diab head of family was recently acquitted of all charges. Hope it didn’t cost too much and he gets to keep his machine guns in his house.
They probably have relatives in the Parliament – along with the more than 70 (some say 71) former police, intelligence, and army generals. http://pomed.org/pomed-publications/pom ... g-dissent/
Certain ‘skills’ are always in demand and the acquitted machine gun toting head of the Diab family is now a Board member of the President’s Tahya Masr fund for charity. The fund is secret, not audited, no annual report, not accountable to Parliament, gives contracts without competition, has no plan or stated priorities, objectives or performance measures, possibly extracts ‘settlements’ from corrupt businessmen and pays no taxes so I guess this will be familiar territory for him and I’m sure he will do well – maybe he will get contracts from them or at least insider information.
The limited public information on what the fund does reveals generous gifts/grants to select private sector firms. At no stage have they asked for public submissions or a competitive tender let alone consultation on what people actually want. Community groups get no money. It looks like top-down, centralized decision-making where Upper Egypt gets no more than its ‘traditional’ scant share of the spoils.
Its almost like the Mubaraks never left. Their friends haven’t – just been recycled and now pay a different ferryman. Its good that Egypt is run like a close-knit family - but best not to rely on certain members of the Saudi Royal family whose lives may come to an early and decapitated end for corruption.
[even the rats, they all have a place in life]
