Sawiris returns after Orascom Construction settles tax dispute
One of Egypt's richest families returned to their home country on Friday after a travel ban was lifted following an agreement to pay around $1 billion to settle a tax dispute with the government.
The Sawiris family manages Orascom Construction Industries, one of the largest employers in the Middle East and Egypt's biggest publicly traded company. It employees around 45,000 employees in Egypt alone.
Cairo airport officials said business tycoon Onsi Sawiris and his two sons, Nassef and Naguib, were greeted at the airport by a delegation from the president's office. They handed the family a bouquet of flowers and delivered a letter from President Mohammed Morsi's office, the officials said. The officials spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Onsi and his son, Nassef, were not in Egypt when the travel ban was announced early March by the country's top prosecutor.
Egyptian authorities had been investigating allegations that the company failed to pay roughly $2 billion in taxes from profits on its sale of Orascom Building to France's Lafarge. The country's finance minister had requested a criminal case be expedited against them for alleged tax evasion.
Naguib Sawiris, who was not named in the travel ban, is a founder of one of Egypt's liberal opposition parties and was the owner of a liberal Egyptian satellite channel. In a television interview, he suggested the tax case was politically motivated.
The company insists it did not violate any laws, and that it made the payment after an almost year-long dispute that could have led to a "prolonged legal battle with unpredictable outcomes."