Egypt's public prosecutors' office said on Sunday it had 'frozen' land in southern Egypt controlled by Saudi billionaire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal because the original sale of the land violated the law.
The public prosecutor has been investigating business transactions and the finances of officials under ousted President Hosni Mubarak since mass protests forced him to resign as president on 11 February.
The land, owned by al-Waleed's Kingdom Agricultural Development Co. (KADCO), is part of the Toshka desert project to pump water from Egypt's Aswan High Dam reservoir and deliver it via a 50 km (30 mile) canal to reclaimed agricultural land located 60 km from the Sudanese border.
KADCO, part of al-Waleed's Kingdom Holding Co., bought 100,000 feddans (420 million square meters) at Toshka in 1998, soon after the project began.
"Investigations revealed that… the contract contained unknown provisions that violated the law and gave the company unjustified benefits," the public prosecutor's spokesman, Adel al-Saeed, said in a written statement.
The spokesman said Al-Waleed's contract violated Egyptian law because the area KADCO bought was twice the legal limit and because it improperly exempted al-Waleed's company from all taxes and fees.
The contract was signed on the Egyptian side by former Agriculture Minister Youssef Wali, and Saeed said on Sunday that Wali's assets had also been frozen.
The contract also granted outright ownership of the land once the company completed payments, in violation of rules stipulating that the land must be completely reclaimed and planted within five years, Saeed said.
