Egyptian executive charged with defrauding US agency
August 19, 2004
By Paul Garwood
Cairo - The president and chief executive of Egypt's biggest internet company had been charged with trying to defraud an American aid agency, officials at the US attorney's office in New York said yesterday.
LINKdotNET's Khaled Bishara was arrested on July 10 in New York and released after paying $300 000 (R1.9 million) bail and handing in his passport.
A preliminary hearing had been set for next month, officials said.
Bishara's company launched a Middle East-tailored Web portal, MSN Arabia, in 2001 with the US's Microsoft.
LINKdotNET is a subsidiary of Egypt's Orascom Telecom, which claims to be the biggest GSM network operator in the Middle East, Africa and Pakistan.
The charge relates to Bishara's bid to obtain a US Agency for International Development loan of about $2 million in 2001 to buy Lucent Technologies computer equipment through an American supplier, identified as CyberCrossing.
The US government gives interest-free loans to Egyptian companies to buy US products.
They repay the loans in Egyptian pounds to their government, which must use the funds to finance development projects in Egypt.
An affidavit from the aid agency alleges that instead of spending all the money on US equipment Bishara's company "illegally used the funds to pay a past debt and to purchase equipment" from telecoms firm Saudi Egyptian Logistics and Electronics.
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