CAIRO, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Four Egyptian officials in the Ministry of Supply were arrested Tuesday over receiving bribes of up to 2 million Egyptian pounds (112,000 U.S. dollars) to facilitate food import deals in favor of some major companies.
The four officials busted by the Administrative Control Authority (ACA) included the supply minister's media adviser and spokesman, the minister's adviser for political communications with the parliament, the head of the ministry's Food Industries Holding Company and his office manager.
Egypt has been launching a massive anti-corruption campaign over the past few years that led to the arrest and imprisonment of several officials and senior employees and the retrieval of large amounts of public funds.
Over the past couple of years, the ACA arrested the former governor of Minufiya province north of the capital Cairo, along with two businessmen, a female deputy governor of the coastal province of Alexandria, along with five businessmen, and a former advisor of the finance minister over similar charges.
In February 2017, an Egyptian court sentenced a former irrigation minister to seven years in prison over corruption related to illegal sales of agricultural lands for construction.
Similarly, a former agriculture minister and his deputy were sentenced to 10 years in prison over receiving bribes to grant state-owned land licenses to a business tycoon in 2016.
An Egyptian top court also upheld a three-year jail term for a former housing minister in December 2016 and ordered him to refund more than 255 million Egyptian pounds for selling vast areas of state-owned lands to a real estate mogul below market prices.
