CAIRO: Talks between Egypt and the UK government over the recovery of Egypt's frozen assets in the United Kingdom have reached a deadlock; and as result, the Egyptian government is going to sue UK to recover these assets. Assem Al-Gohary, assistant minister of justice and chair of the Illicit Gains Department (IGD), explained that UK authorities are not cooperating enough to help Egypt to recover these assets, Ahram newspaper posted. Al-Gohary added that undertaking judicial procedures was a last step after Egypt received a Treasury decision mid-December affirming that it is not possible for it to reveal information about the frozen assets, in a sign of non-cooperation from the UK side. UK Treasury said in a previous statement that revealing such information will breach national laws such as the Data Protection Act and Account Confidentially Act. “Ministry of Justice has hired a London-based law company specializing in asset recovery to deal with the British authorities on its behalf” a private source in ministry of justice told Bikyamasr.com. “We argues that the UK Treasury's position violates the UN Treaty Against Corruption (UNTC) and an EU regulation issued on 21 March 2011, which calls for recovering suspected assets, we have lots of Money and assets during revolution of 25th Jan” he added. The British Asset freezing Unit AFU has frozen, based on the EU regulation, about LE850 million worth of assets, accounts and properties. The UK earlier blamed Egyptian authorities for their slowness in repatriating assets the London-based Treasury had frozen.
