Egypt’s prime minister has dismissed the credibility of recordings that allegedly show the president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, demanding that Cairo’s Gulf benefactors pay their aid straight into the Egyptian army’s coffers.
In unverified recordings supposedly of Sisi and his chief of staff, Abbas Kamel, the man said to be Sisi says Saudi Arabia, Egypt’s most generous donor, should pay $10bn (£6.5bn) directly into the army’s account, circumventing the rest of the Egyptian state.
There is no suggestion of personal impropriety, but the voice says: “We need 10 to be deposited in the army’s account … These 10, when we succeed, will be used for what? For the state. We want another 10 like them from the UAE and we want from Kuwait another 10 like them.”
In other parts of the conversation, allegedly recorded in the months before Sisi became president, the man alleged to be Kamel mocks the Gulf nations as “half-states”.
The first man disparagingly says Gulf countries “have money like rice”, potentially embarrassing comments given Sisi’s dependence on the Gulf’s wealth to sustain his regime.
The recordings were broadcast on Saturday by Mekameleen, a Turkey-based channel that supports the Muslim Brotherhood, the group ousted from power by Sisi in 2013 and then driven underground.
The president’s office did not respond to requests for comment about the recordings. But his prime minister, Ibrahim Mahlab, criticised their credibility and said the channel had an axe to grind.
“Nobody in Egypt believes the channels of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Mahlab said in a television interview. “They won’t be able to change the situation on the ground.”
Various Gulf officials also cast doubt on the authenticity of the recordings. But true or not, they may not have heard the last of them. These recent tapes are just the latest of several alleged leaks from Sisi’s office.
Earlier leaks claimed that top Egyptian generals had meddled in the trial of Mohamed Morsi, the president whom Sisi ousted in 2013, and in the prosecution of policemen accused of gassing 37 prisoners to death inside a police truck.
