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| Africa North |
| The billionaire caught up in EgyptÂ’s reform and CanadaÂ’s mobile debate |
| 2011-02-09 |
| His name stood out. There among the list of opposition groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Wafd and Tagammu parties that were meeting with Egyptian Vice-President Omar Suleiman on Sunday, it appeared: “also attending was Naguib Sawiris.” What was the telecom billionaire – the man financing upstart Canadian wireless provider Wind Mobile and Egypt’s richest person – doing in a meeting discussing how the country could get out of its current political crisis? Mr. Sawiris, whose investment in a start-up mobile-phone company sparked a highly charged debate on foreign ownership rules in Canada, leads a group of businessmen and other prominent Egyptians seeking middle ground between the opposing sides in the crisis. While some of the harder-core protest leaders see the plan as a way to divide the opposition and weaken it, others see the group’s proposal to allow Mr. Mubarak to remain as President, but to cede much of his authority to Mr. Suleiman, as a compromise way out of the crisis. Mr. Sawiris, executive chairman of Orascom Telecom Holding SAE, became remarkably rich during the Mubarak years, but his sympathies are not with the President. “He is appalled at the amount of corruption he encountered,” said a businessman who knows him well. More |
| Posted by:tipper |