Swiss freeze Mubarak’s assets

Comment & Analysis
Switzerland has announced it was freezing assets in the country owned by newly resigned President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.

The announcement, which gave no details as to what assets Mubarak or his family might have in the country, will send shock waves through the presidential palaces of other Middle Eastern countries.

“The government wants to avoid any risk of misappropriation of state-owned Egyptian assets,” a statement by the Foreign Ministry said. Stories of Mubarak’s personal wealth, ranging up to wild estimates of US$70 billion, long suppressed by state media, began to circulate among the crowds from the beginning of protests.

His family is said to own property around the world, including London, Paris, Dubai and the United States.

He is understood to have money in bank accounts in Britain, the US, and France as well as other western countries.

But the control of resources by the regime’s leaders is mirrored across the region, whether through military dictatorship, as in neighbours such as Libya, or oil-funded feudal rule, as in the Gulf. — Telegraph