CAIRO - Egypt's Prosecutor General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud Saturday shelved probe into the sale of a vast area of land to a leading real estate company, after it found out that the deal did not violate laws or waste public funds. "The waste of public funds report, filed by 45 MPs against the sale of Madinaty land by former Minister of Housing Mohamed Ibrahim Suleiman to a company owned by Hesham Talaat Moustafa, was not found to be true. Therefore, the case was dropped," read a statement from the Mahmoud's office. The statement stated that the five-month investigations, in which Suleiman, the head of the New Urban Communities chief were questioned, had not found any violations. Egypt's High Administrative Court is due to pass a ruling on the appeal of Talaat Moustafa Group (TMG), which is owned by real estate tycoon Hesham Talaat Moustafa, on the Madinaty land deal case on September 14. A lower court ruled in June that the New Urban Communities Authority, a an affiliate to the Ministry of Housing, had broken the law when it sold the land directly to a TMG unit instead of opening it up for bidding, and that the contract should be scrapped. Moustafa was originally found guilty and sentenced to death for his role in the murder of a Lebanese singer, a trial that gripped the Arab world. That conviction was overturned on appeal and a retrial ordered. His brother took over leadership of TMG after he was charged.
