Thursday Rave and Rants: #EP6 “Mohamed Al-Amin and case 188/2022” (Part#1)

Here is the 6th episode from my podcast in Arabic and it is about the late media tycoon Mohamed Al-Amin.

Famous Egyptian businessman and former media tycoon Mohamed Al-Amin died last week while serving a three-years-prison for sexually assaulting underage girls in a case that shocked society less than a year ago.

Al-Amin who was spending his prison sentence at Wadi Al Natroun Centre for Correction and Rehabilitation was transferred to Private El-Salam hospital several months ago to be treated for cancer.

A Cairo Criminal Court sentenced Mohamed Al-Amin to three years and fined him LE 200,000 for sexually assaulting seven underage girls in May at an orphanage he established in Upper Egypt.

It was a first-degree sentence, and he was already challenging the first direct sentence.

Ironically, I wrote this post on a draft I made in May after his sentencing that for some reason I did not complete. This is what I wrote then “It is like the end of season one of his saga.”

I was writing that post then because I wanted to express how I and others believed that that was a light sentence for a grave crime.

As soon as the news of his death was announced, we found news websites and news groups following state-affiliated “United Media service” mourning him politely on its channels as well as social media accounts with no mention or regard whatsoever to his conviction.

UMS acquired Future Media Group which acquired CBC Network and Al-Watan under its umbrella in 2018 from Mohamed Al-Amin.

Those were the same channels and websites that shared the news of his arrest and his trial as an example no one is above the law.

Now to the main question about who Mohamed Al-Amin was.

Who was that man represented in 2011 as a businessman only to become a media man in very few couples of years, the most critical years in the past decade?

It is unclear when Mohamed Al-Amin was born as far as I searched. According to my estimation, I would say in the 1950s. He was born in the Bani Soueif governorate. Al-Amin studied engineering at the University of Alexandria.

According to Journalist and TV host Khairy Ramadan, he met Mohamed Al-Amin for the first time in Kuwait in 1977 when he used to have an infrastructure company.

Now people are confused between Al-Amin and Al-Ameen Plastic company which is famous for manufacturing plastic toilet seats “its elephant ads in the 1990s were famous in Egypt but according to the company’s history, it was founded in 1978 by its founder businessman Mohamed Youssef Gaafar who passed away in 2021.

Mohamed Al-Amin "Egyptian Chronicles" 

Al-Amin returned to Egypt in 2002 after decades in Kuwait to open an agricultural reclamation company in 2002 and then he co-founded the famous Amar Group with businessman Mansour Amar in 2005  according to Marefa Online Encyclopedia. He was a non-executive member of the Group’s board.

Till 2010, the name of Al-Amin was unknown outside the realm of business. I think he was among the NDP businessmen but was not from the top names.

In April 2011, businessman Mohamed Al-Amin or rather his company “Future Media” published El-Watan Daily Newspaper.

In July 2011, businessman Mohamed Al-Amin became the Media man Mohamed Al-Amin when he launched the Capital Broadcast Center “CBC” network’s first channel with a range of big media figures like Lamees El-Hadidy and his old friend Khairy Ramadan. He also established Future Media Group.

Then in September he reportedly acquired 85% of the share of El-Nahar Network which was launched in June 2011 by businessmen Walid Mustafa and Amr El-Khaki.

In 2012, Mohamed Al-Amin acquired Cairo-based Arab News Agency “ANA” from Kuwaiti M.A Kharafi and Sons Company. In July of the same year, Amr El-Khaky acquired Al-Amin’s shares in Al-Nahar Network.

El-Khaky also acquired Al-Amin shares in Youm 7. “Yes, it turned out that he owned shares then”

Then he acquired the Modern TV network from its owner Walid Dabaas in September 2013. In Nutshell he owned 14 TV channels in Egypt.

He turned to have the biggest shares in El-Fagr Newspaper.

Now the question in Egypt during then, was from where the money Mohamed Al-Amin came so he would become a media mogul. Two main theories or rumours spread then. The first one was very popular in Media City, and it was that he was investing money in Kuwaiti businessmen.

The second one is that he was investing money of the NDP Pro-Mubarak businessmen.

Journalist Khairy Ramadan says that he accompanied Al-Amin when he went by himself to meet some VIPs at some high-security institution before launching CBC as he shared all the info about his wealth in 2011.

In July 2013 following the ouster of Mohamed Morsi, Mohamed Al-Amin became a board member of Egypt Support Fund, the predecessor of “Long Live Egypt/Tahya Misr Fund” with an aim to revamp the shanty town.

On 25 June 2014, Al-Amin announced that he was donating half of his wealth to the “Egypt Support Fund” despite we do not know anything about his wealth. In July of the same year, Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi launched the “Tahya Misr/Long Live Egypt Fund” replacing the Egyptian Support Fund. In December 2014, a presidential decree was issued appointing the fund’s board of trustees. Among the appointees then was Mohamed Al-Amin.

In October 2015, the Chamber of Audiovisual Media Industry (CAMI) was established officially to regulate TV channels and it was headed by Mohamed Al-Amin and included the owners of the TV channels in the country.

In November 2015, the chamber issued a decision that would cost Al-Amin a lot of headaches in the upcoming years: They banned Mortada Mansour from appearing on screen. Mansour included Al-Amin and the rest of the chamber’s members on his nemesis list. He attacked Al-Amin everywhere publicly accusing him of money laundering and saying that he knew his “Kuwait years”. 

In February 2016, Mansour threatened Al-Amin to open the “file of his marriages to underage girls”. Do not ask me why he did not report the famous media mogul. All those years there have been ongoing endless legal battles between them.

Then in October 2017, the media scene in Egypt as well as kings and moguls began that reshuffle game as the Egyptian Media Group re-entered the scene. In October 2018, Egyptian Media Group acquired 51% of Future Media and actually, and Mohamed Al-Amin began to fade out of the scene.

Then the seventh day of the year 2022 came and we found the name of Al-Amin in the breaking news: He was arrested in his villa in Cairo for sex trafficking and committing actions punishable by law with minors.

It was the bombshell by all measures. On 8^th January, the Prosecution ordered his detention pending an investigation into human trafficking and sexual assault of girls at his orphanage “Safe Hands” which he owned and operated in his hometown governorate Bani Soueif.  

The “Safe hands” orphanage was inaugurated by the Minister of Social solidarity Nevine Qabbage and the governor of Bani Soueif along with Mohamed Al-Amin in March 2021. The post I am sharing here is from the official Facebook page of the Cabinet. It was removed from the Social Solidarity Ministry’s FB page, but it still remains on the cabinet page.

According to the official information, the orphanage hosted then 11 girls from 6 to 18 years old and it had the capacity to host other 21 girls then.

On 8 January, the man who reported the matter to the prosecution and Child Help Line came forward and revealed horrifying details in a Facebook live stream. His name is Rami Elgebali.

Elgebali, an apolitical family man and a father of two children launched six years ago Egypt and the Arab world’s biggest online initiative dedicated to missing children and finding them under the title “Missing Children”.

Already “Atfal Mafkoda” on Facebook is another story itself with tens of successful tearful stories.

The initiative does not only involve finding missing children or finding families because we got adults also trying to reach their lost parents via social media. It also evolved to report the abuse orphans to face in orphanages in Egypt.

It is not a big secret but the orphanage system in Egypt needs not only reform but a revolution.

According to Elgebali, due to his activism in this field for all those years, he had channels with NGOs and officials inside the social solidarity ministry which supervises and regulates orphanages. Also, he became familiar with the office of the Prosecutor General as he reported in the past several abuse cases involving orphanages.

Elgebali recounted how the case landed in his lap technically through whistleblowers in the social solidarity ministry.

He stated that sometimes the officials fail to stop the violations in the orphanages “do not ask me how but it shows the scale of the problem” and so they leak him the information including contacts with victims.

Elgebali said that two officials in the ministry leaked to him the information about the sexual abuse taking place at Al-Amin’s orphanage a month and a half before the arrest of the late businessman. He said that the officials told him that three girls aged 13, 17 and 18 years old were sexually abused at an orphanage and that there were medical reports from medical centers that proved their claims.

He said that those whistleblowers put him in touch with the girls that spoke with him and revealed more horrifying details uncovering several violations already aside from the sexual abuse that took place in the orphanage.

The girls, for instance, revealed that Mohamed Al-Amin invited them to spend a couple of days with him at his house on the North Coast and bought for them revealing clothes. The girls sent a photo showing them with Al-Amin on the North coast. The photo was leaked online.

I will stop here and till the next part inshallah we will deal with the crazy trial of Al-Amin.

This is what is the first part of my rant about Mohamed Al-Amin in Arabic.

Here is the RSS of the Podcast which I hope you follow if you speak Arabic.

Here is the podcast's URL on Spotify and Apple Podcast. It is also available on Stitcher, Google Podcasts and  Anghami.

I want to thank all those amazing listeners who are kind enough to listen to my rants in Arabic and the amazing readers who are kind enough to read those very long posts in English.

Thanks for your time and happy holiday.