Observatory report reveals that MB MPs battled corruption more than any other group.

 A report issued by the Public Funds Defense Unit in the United Group (Lawyers and Legal Advisers) revealed that  in 13 governorates the sum of money lost between the period of November 2008 to November 2009 reached approximately  LE 1.1 billion. The money misused was in the local administration units, Ministry of Education, Irrigation, Agriculture, Transportation and Ministry of Health as well as tax bodies and companies of the public sector.

The report praised the performance of the Muslim Brotherhood Parliamentary bloc as they submitted 7 out of the 14 interrogations and 19 out of the 28 requests for information on the waste of public funds.

In the report “The Waste of Public Monitored  Funds” discussed in a seminar illustrated that Alexandria came in the lead  as it wasted 645 million pounds, followed by  Cairo which wasted 256 million, Daqahleya governorate with 66 million pounds and Fayoum governorate with  58 million pounds.

The report stated that public funds were wasted in many different areas including in the unfinished and neglected projects. The selling of companies of public sectors for less than its genuine price, for personal gains and the exporting of natural gas to the Israeli entity with prices lower than the global market are also listed. The report also discussed the waste of agricultural land and drinking water due to poor internal networks, the eradication of the state’s wealth of real estate due to the lack of maintenance and the waste of electric energy.

The report stressed that the reason behind this squandering includes the lack of logic and strategy and the neglect of economic and technical feasibilities because of the lack of transparenct and open discussion of public projects in addition to strong centralization which maintains a large gap between decision making and implementation. The absence of the concept of political decision which wastes the basis of economic and administrative projects is also among the reasons of budget wasting.

The report stressed that the most serious reason behind this is the pressure imposed by some individuals close to the ruling party and the executive powers who are after personal gains. The significant declining role of Parliament in monitoring and providing available means of monitoring to the members of the parliament are also behind the increased waste of money.

The report called for the discussing and analysis of the reports of the Central Agency for Accounting CAA and the Administrative Control Authority in the Parliament, publishing and its review for community discussion in addition to toughening of punishment on any perpetrators and the evasion of wasting public funds. It concluded that all these problems may be eliminated by the appointing of competent and trustworthy people.