In 1996, the daughter of Magdy Rasikh, Heidi, married Ala’a Mubarak,
the late Egyptian President Mohammad Hosni Mubarak’s eldest son. Two
years after the marriage, the fugitive businessman directed his
investments towards natural gas, and on May 26, 1998, he established
the National Gas Company as per decision No. (961) of 1998 by the
General Authority for Investment and Free Zones, or GAFI.
On May 19, 2010 and months before the end of the Mubarak regime, the
National Gas Company had a decision issued by the
Paris Court of Appeals
to withhold the funds of the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation
abroad, claiming that a ruling was issued in its favor by the Cairo
Regional Center for International Commercial Arbitration. The
Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation was to be fined by
approximately 254 million Egyptian pounds as a difference in price
and dues to the gas company. This came about because of the rise in
the prices of the basic requirements needed to implement the project
that would deliver natural gas to residential, commercial and
industrial areas in Al-Sharqiya Governorate between 1999 and 2008.
In a ruling on April 3, 2014, the International Center for
Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) rejected the lawsuit
brought by the National Gas Company against the Egyptian General
Petroleum Corporation.
On January 6, 1999, the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation had
signed a twenty-year franchise agreement with the National Gas
Company to deliver natural gas to residential, commercial and
industrial areas and to power plants in Al-Sharqiya Governorate. By
this contract, the company was committed to calculating and
collecting the value of the gas sold to customers and consumers and
to paying the authority’s dues out of this gas value.
On June 16, 2021, the Supreme Prosecution department for Public
Funds referred the following fugitive businessmen to criminal trial
before the Cairo Criminal Court in case No. (5298) of 2021 of the
Heliopolis criminal court and case No. (96) of 2021 of the Supreme
department of Public Funds: Mohammad Magdy Hussein Rasikh, former
chairman of the board of directors of the National Gas Company and
the son-in-law of former President Mohammad Hosni Mubarak; Mohammad
Hani Ahmad Mohammad Farid, former chairman of the board of directors
of the National Gas Company; and Hussam Ridha Junainah, former
chairman of the board of directors of the National Gas Company. The
fugitive businessmen were accused of refusing to grant the Egyptian
General Petroleum Corporation its dues from the gas value collected
from consumers, which was estimated at one billion Egyptian pounds.
The investigative journalist obtained a copy of the attached records
of the Administrative Oversight Authority on the referral to the
Supreme Prosecution department for Public Funds. The records reveal
that the company fulfilled its obligations until July 1, 2010. After
that, it refrained from providing the authority with its dues for
the value of the gas obtained from customers. It also refused to
sign the approvals for the quantities and values of consumed gas.
This conflicted with the contract signed between the two parties,
which expired on January 29, 2019. The investigations of Ahmad Muhyi
Al-Din Al-Qadi who is a member of the Administrative Oversight
Authority and is the seventh witness in the case show that the
responsibility fell on the two defendants alongside another deceased
person.
The legal dispute is ongoing between the Egyptian government
represented by the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation on one
hand, and the National Gas Company on the other hand, while the
contract signed between the two sides expired in 2019. Despite this,
the document on gas delivery procedures on the official
website
of the Ministry of Petroleum still lists the National Gas Company,
along with its address and contact information as part of the
companies that deliver natural gas to homes and industrial areas.
This investigation reveals how Magdy Rasikh deceived the Egyptian
government for more than ten years by obtaining agreements and deals
from the Egyptian Ministry of Petroleum to import natural gas and
supply it to homes and factories. These are similar to the
activities conducted by his first company, National Gas, only this
time they are conducted by another company called Fleet Energy,
which was founded in Panama in 2007 with an operating office in
Dubai.
This investigation is based on leaked documents obtained by the
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (
) and shared with ARIJ and a large number of publishers around the
world within a project labeled as the Pandora Papers. The leaks mark
the biggest cross-border journalistic collaboration project in
history and include millions of documents from lawyers’ offices
about tax havens. They also uncover assets, secret transactions and
the hidden fortunes of the rich, including more than 130
billionaires, more than 30 world leaders, a number of fugitives or
convicted people alongside sports stars, judges, tax officials and
counterintelligence agencies.
Rasikh’s name appeared in the Fleet Energy documents alongside the
name of Engineer Essam Kafafi who is the company’s chairman of the
board of directors. Fleet Energy has many subsidiaries all of which
are completely owned by the company, including Fleet Energy
Hydrocarbons, Ltd. DMCC; Fleet Offshore Petroleum Services; Fleet
Fuel FZC; Fleet Tanking Inc.; Fleet Oil and Gas S.A.. One of the
documents on “the Agent’s Confidential Information” lists Mohammad
Magdy Hussein Rasikh personal details with passport No. 45519, born
on December 23, 1943 and residing on 26 Mohammad Ghuneim Street,
Heliopolis, Cairo. This document shows that “Magdy Rasikh” founded
Fleet Oil and Gas S.A. on January 16, 2008.
The documents reveal that Rasikh is the beneficial owner of Fleet
Oil and Gas S.A. through the office of Alemán, Cordero, Galindo &
Lee Trust Belize Limited and that Essam’s name is listed as the
company’s current representative client of record.
According to the company’s official website, the company’s main
office is in Dubai in the Abraj Buhairat Jumeirah area. It also has
two other offices: one on 261 Street in the Ma’adi neighborhood in
Cairo, Egypt, and the other in the Russian capital of Moscow.
The Fleet Energy website also states that the company is an active
trading partner with the following companies: the Russian Rosneft
company and its subsidiary company Rosneft Trading in Geneva; Shell
for trading and shipping; Kaz Monai Gas in Kazakhstan; Rom Petrol in
Romania; OMV for Supply and Trade Ltd.; the Egyptian General
Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) in Egypt; the Egyptian Natural Gas
Holding Company (EGAS) in Egypt, the Spanish petroleum company; Luke
Oil in Russia; Libya Oil; the Kolmar Group Shareholding in Bulgaria;
Petrosa in South Africa, Petro China; Saras S. P. E. in Italy; Enok
for Supply and Trade in the United Arab Emirates; and the Aden
Refineries. This is in addition to other private and state-owned
refineries, wholesale distribution companies and traders. The
company’s clients include national oil companies such as the
National Oil Corporation in Libya and countries in North and East
Africa.
In July 2015, Essam Kafafi, Magdy’s right-hand man and the
commercial partner of the Russian Rosneft company, was present when
the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation and the Egyptian Natural
Gas Holding Company (EGAS) signed two terms documents with the
Russian Rosneft company for the supply of petroleum products and
liquefied natural gas to Egypt. On May 6, 2016, Rosneft delivered
its first shipment of liquefied natural gas to Egypt.
Fleet Energy worked with the Egyptian government in 2010, and the
company was granted the right to process between 1-1.5 million
barrels of crude oil per month at the Maydour refinery. It made
successive sales operations of products that had been produced for
the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation. Fleet Energy confirms
that it has an excellent work relationship with EGPC.
In 2014, 510 thousand metric tons of gasoline and gas oil were sold
to the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation through Fleet Energy’s
strategic partners.
All transactions in 2015 were fulfilled on a bid basis, either
individually or through the company’s partners, Rosneft Trading,
with a total supply volume of around 450 thousand metric tons of
cargoes primarily containing fuel oil and gas oil. These were
delivered to the General Petroleum Corporation’s Al-Ain Al-Sokhneh,
Suez and Alexandria ports.
Fleet Energy confirms that it is currently part of the direct supply
network between Rosneft and the Egyptian General Petroleum
Corporation in providing petroleum products and crude oil in
addition to supplying liquefied natural gas with EGAS. During 2016,
more than 1.5 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas and
petroleum products consisting of fuel and gas oil were supplied to
Egypt.
In July 2017, the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company granted Fleet
Energy the initial approval to import liquefied natural gas.
Granting these initial import approvals lined up with the issuance
of the law on regulating the gas market in August 2017. Chapter (2)
of article (36) of this law allows the private sector to import gas
from abroad for the first time when this role had previously been
limited to the government. This took place a few weeks before the
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi ratified the law on
regulating gas market activities, which was published in the
official Egyptian Gazette in early August 2017.
In May 2018, on the sidelines of the 22nd Saint Petersburg
International Economic Forum, Rosneft signed a framework cooperation
agreement with Fleet Energy and Fleetliner Energy S.A.. The parties
declared the intention to explore the possibilities of creating a
joint project to develop a supply chain to provide more gas to
industrial consumers in Egypt.
Magdy Rasikh’s problematic financial relationship with the Egyptian
state is not limited to the oil sector; on February 20, 2021, the
Public Prosecution announced on its official Facebook page, that the
National Committee for the Recovery of Funds and Assets Abroad
signed a contract to settle and reconcile with the defendants
Mohammad Ibrahim Suleiman and Mohammad Magdy Hussein Rasikh who were
charged in some cases.
The committee, which was headed by consultant Hamada El-Sawy who is
also the Egyptian Public Prosecutor, signed the settlement and
reconciliation applications filed by the defendants Suleiman and
Rasikh. The defendants paid a total of 1,315,701,24 Egyptian pounds.
On December 21, 2016 and while Rasikh and Kafafi’s company was
signing oil agreements with the Egyptian government, the Egyptian
Court of Cassation was in the process of ruling in favor of the
indictment issued by the Cairo Criminal Court on September 21, 2015.
By this ruling, Mohammad Magdy Hussein Rasikh, chairman of the board
of directors of the Sixth of October Development and Investment
Company (SODIC), was convicted to five years of fortified
imprisonment in absentia. This was the final verdict in the SODIC
case in which the court charged the defendants with profiteering and
intentional harm done to public funds.
Mohammad Magdy Hussein Rasikh, chairman of the board of directors of
the Sixth of October Development and Investment Company (SODIC) was
accused of acquiring many plots of lands in the cities of Sheikh
Zayed and Al-Giza Al-Jadeedah at prices below their market value. To
do this, he colluded with Mohammad Ibrahim Mohammad Suleiman, former
Minister of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities and with some
officials of the New Urban Communities Association.
A document in the Panama records dated June 2015 reveals that
Mohammad Magdy Hussein Rasikh was granted a Power of Attorney and
was appointed as a legal representative for Fleet Energy Inc.. By
this, he could act individually in the name of the institution and
on its behalf in any and all its trading activities globally when
necessary. Since February 12, 2010, he could also carry out any and
all representative actions that the company itself can do. These are
the same powers that were granted to Essam Kafafi on July 17, 2009.
Kafafi holds a British passport, number 800370988, and is the
chairman of the board of directors.
A letter from the law firm Alemán, Cordero, Galindo & Lee S. A. in
Panama to Essam Kafafi on March 25, 2010 states that according to
Kafafi’s instructions, Mohammad Magdy Hussein Rasikh was granted a
general Power of Attorney certified by the Egyptian Consulate, and a
bank account was opened. The company lists the same address as
Rakesh’s contact details on 26 Mohammad Ghuneim Street, Heliopolis,
Cairo.
Another document dated February 12, 2010 on the meeting of the board
of directors of Fleet Energy, Inc. shows that a bank account with
Euro Bank EFG, Cyprus was opened. This is operated individually or
jointly by Messrs. Essam Jamal Kafafi or Mohammad Magdy Hussein
Rasikh, and they are authorized to sign documents, withdraw funds
through this account and to manage any other transactions of any
kind with Euro Bank EFG, Cyprus on behalf of Fleet Energy, Inc..
They are given maximum powers, including the authority to activate
any alternatives they may deem suitable or necessary.
Kafafi’s social media accounts show that he was born on August 9,
1961 and that he obtained a Bachelor of Engineering degree at Helwan
University in 1986. From 1996 to 2000, he was the chairman of the
National Gas Company, which was founded by Magdy Rasikh. Then, he
moved to manage a company for developing projects in the Middle East
in Dubai between 2000 and 2007. After that, he founded Fleet Energy
and is currently the chairman of the board of directors.
In a nutshell, the case is as follows: How does the Egyptian
Ministry of Petroleum grant these private agreements on supplying
gas and open the Egyptian market to activities by a company run by
businessman Magdy Rasikh who is nominally represented by Essam
Kafafi? This was also happening at a time when Rasikh was facing a
five-year fortified prison sentence because he was convicted for
profiteering and intentional harm done to public funds. Rasikh is
currently on trial before the Cairo Criminal Court along with others
on charges of refusing to provide the Egyptian General Petroleum
Corporation’s dues with the value of gas collected from consumers,
which are estimated at one billion Egyptian pounds.
At the time of publication of this investigation, Rasikh, Kafafi and
their companies had not responded to our inquiries.