Last September, the Egyptian authorities succeeded in recovering 26,000 feddans in El-Ayyat, south of Giza, after a long legal dispute lasting nearly seven years between the Egyptian government and Egypt Gulf for Development and Investment (formerly known as the Egyptian Kuwaiti company). The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, part of the World Bank, settled the case in Egypt’s favour, allowing it to recover the land and pay compensation not exceeding 1% of the compensation the company had demanded, estimated at USD 8 billion.
The dispute began in 2002, when the Egyptian government concluded a contract with the Egyptian Kuwaiti company granting it about 26,000 feddans in the El-Ayyat area at a price of EGP 200 per feddan, with 25% of the price paid in advance and the rest in five annual instalments. The aim of the contract was to invest the land in agricultural projects to support the Egyptian economy and increase job opportunities.
However, the Egyptian authorities discovered a number of violations committed by the company regarding the terms of the contract, most notably accusations that it used the land to dig for antiquities, as some residents claimed that the area, which had turned into a den harbouring outlaws, was full of antiquities. As a result, three people were killed there, and the police did not identify the perpetrators, but claimed they had killed each other in an antiquities theft operation.
Shortly before the 25 January 2011 Revolution, the company submitted a request to the Egyptian government to change its activity from agricultural to residential while paying the dues related to the difference in the land price, but the Reconstruction and Agricultural Development Authority rejected the request and issued a decision on 28 February 2011 definitively rescinding the sale contract, based on violations of the contract’s terms, which stipulated that the land be used for agriculture only. However, in June 2012, the authority notified the company that it had to pay a large sum estimated at EGP 6 billion as a financial obligation for the buildings constructed on the agricultural land, which had been converted to real estate uses. The company refused and filed a lawsuit demanding the cancellation of the rescission decision, claiming that the contract was still valid and that it had not received official notice of its rescission, threatening to resort to international arbitration to resolve the crisis definitively.
The Egyptian Kuwaiti company had owned the land for many years and was supposed to turn it into a huge agricultural project strengthening Egyptian food security, but on the ground it saw no development, as the company breached its contractual obligations under the contract concluded with the Egyptian government. Despite repeated attempts by the Egyptian side to keep the agreed project on track, matters moved to local and international courts, with the arbitration result coming in Cairo’s favour.
Facilitating the Seizure of Land
The plan to facilitate the seizure of the land dates back to 2002, when former Irrigation Minister Nasr El-Din Allam was working as a technical adviser to the company before taking office as minister: he prepared a study on reclaiming a plot of land in El-Ayyat in Giza Governorate, with an area of 26,000 feddans (about 110 million square metres), and on how to deliver water to the land, and handed the study to Ahmed Abdel Salam Qoura, the company’s managing director, to be submitted to the Horizontal Expansion Sector of the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation.
Zawia3 reviewed the details of case No. 76 of 2015 (Public Funds Prosecution), registered as total case No. 9827 of 2016, in which Mohamed Nasr El-Din Ibrahim Youssef Allam, former Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation, known as Nasr El-Din Allam, and former member of the People’s Assembly Ahmed Mohamed Abdel Salam Seddik Qoura, known as Abdel Salam Qoura, who worked as managing director of the Egyptian Kuwaiti Company for Land Reclamation and Livestock and Poultry Production, were accused of facilitating the seizure of 26,000 feddans of state land in El-Ayyat, Giza Governorate, valued at EGP 50 billion, and allocating it to the Egyptian Kuwaiti Company for Land Reclamation for only EGP 5,200,000. Both were sentenced to seven years in prison by the Giza Criminal Court (first instance), before the Court of Cassation overturned the ruling and acquitted them at the second instance.
According to the facts of the case, Qoura, as a People’s Assembly member for the now-dissolved National Democratic Party at the time, used his influence to have the plot allocated to the company by direct order, on condition that the land be reclaimed for agriculture. The allocation was indeed approved and the contract concluded on 16 February 2002, and from that date until 2010 the land was not reclaimed, coinciding with the slowdown in building the dedicated El-Ayyat irrigation station, of which only 47.49% was completed despite the delivery of 100% of the electromechanical equipment needed to operate it.
When Nasr El-Din Allam took over the irrigation portfolio, he completed the company’s plan to seize the land and convert it from agricultural reclamation to residential activity: on 19 December 2010 he issued an official letter in response to the Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation’s letter No. 1270 of 7 November 2010 inquiring about the possibility of providing a water allocation for that area, falsely claiming that it was difficult to provide surface water to this land because of limited available water resources, even though in 2002, as a technical consultant to that company, he had submitted a technical study that included the possibility of providing and delivering water to this land.
In the decision referring Allam to criminal trial, the Public Prosecution accused him of forging his letter on the impossibility of delivering water to the land, to force the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation to convert the land to urban activity because it was unsuitable for reclamation.
As a result, the company became entitled to change the land’s activity to urban use, to obtain the profit represented by the difference in the land’s value, about EGP 50 billion, as the market value per metre in this area as building land was estimated at no less than EGP 350.
Clashes With Gunmen
Some 80 kilometres from Cairo, former People’s Assembly member Ahmed Abdel Salam Qoura seized land through fraud, forgery, shows of force and influence, and squatting by gunmen with heavy weapons, as the investigations proved. Army forces led by the area’s military governor, together with police forces, after the 25 January Revolution, launched several campaigns over five years, some of which we documented, raiding the places and hideouts where thugs and dangerous registered criminals affiliated with Qoura lived. Armed clashes took place with them until they fled, and bulldozers then demolished the huts in which they had been living.
A report in Al-Ahram newspaper in 2014 indicated that the company had sold the land’s sand for construction work for millions of pounds, under the pretext of reclaiming and cultivating the land, all under the weight of thuggery and violence by a group of fugitives from sentences and outlaws. The decision to rescind the contract was a rescue solution for the residents of the area, who suffer extreme poverty and believed things would return to normal, but capital owners, thugs and antiquities diggers made the area a legacy for themselves alone.
The International Arbitration Crisis With Kuwait
The case embroiled Egypt in an international arbitration case with the State of Kuwait from 2021 to 2023, as the latter demanded the payment of compensation of no less than EGP 100 billion in favour of the Egyptian Kuwaiti company, which claimed it had been harmed by the Egyptian government and the rescission of its contract, even though it had held the land (currently worth more than EGP 50 billion) for nearly 15 years.
Before the international arbitration battle, the Egyptian side initially negotiated with the Kuwaiti company over converting the land contract’s activity from agricultural to residential, before rescinding the contract, in exchange for paying EGP 48 billion so that the company could continue the contract, according to an assessment of the price differences between agricultural and residential activity. But the company refused and requested a re-evaluation, which did take place by an official committee, which asked the company to pay EGP 38 billion to change the activity, but it refused again, so the Egyptian side rescinded the contract, and the company then submitted an official request to resort to international arbitration.
The Kuwaiti company based its request for international arbitration on the claim that it had not committed any violations regarding the land and had complied with all the contract’s terms, and accused previous governments in Egypt and the regime of former President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak of negligence and breach of contracts and of failing to supply the land with water, claiming that it was the Egyptian government that changed the nature of the projects on the land from agricultural to urban in 2008 and refused to set the new price for the land.
The Egyptian side, in its responses to the request for international arbitration, relied on the forgery and manipulation carried out by the company and its officials, submitting documents showing its commitment to the contract with the company and photos from the ground proving that a large part of the irrigation station dedicated to the land had been built and the equipment for it provided, without the Kuwaiti company taking measures to pursue the activity seriously, in addition to proof that all that had been reclaimed and cultivated of the land was only 300 feddans out of 26,000, about 100 feddans of which had been left fallow, and that this is what prompted the Land Reclamation Authority to rescind the contract. It explained that it had negotiated with the company to continue the contract after converting the land’s activity from agricultural to residential, and indeed that in 2004 the company had carried out a pilot research project with the Faculty of Engineering at Cairo University and divided the land and prepared it for building, in violation of the purpose of the allocation under the sale contract concluded in 2002, and a report on this was prepared, concluding with a recommendation to rescind the contract.
Recently, in 2024, the Egyptian authorities obtained a final international ruling in the government’s favour, obliging the Egyptian Kuwaiti company to return the land to the state. In this regard, the State Lawsuits Authority stressed that it had spared the state from paying USD 8 billion that the Kuwaiti company had demanded, claiming they were losses it suffered as a result of the project’s disruption.
Land for Future Investment
Former MP Sobhy El-Daly, former member of the House of Representatives for the El-Ayyat constituency, considers the final ruling a victory for Cairo, calling for the land to be put to good use in agricultural or industrial investment projects that benefit citizens, or to be distributed to the farmers of Giza Governorate, each receiving an area of between three and five feddans, to boost agricultural production. He revealed to Zawia3 that the government intends to establish an investment zone in El-Ayyat, adding: “It is not reasonable for a feddan to be sold for EGP 200 under the current and previous economic conditions.”
Meanwhile, former MP for the El-Ayyat constituency Mahmoud Abdel Moez El-Hefny stresses to Zawia3 that the ruling to recover the land marked a turning point in the lives of the constituency’s citizens, who dreamed of it for years, calling for it to be turned into an integrated industrial zone, because it has been subjected to bulldozing, to provide hundreds or thousands of job opportunities, or to be allocated for large investment projects and offered to local or international investors, in a way that serves the interests of the state and citizens.
Economic expert Bilal Shoaib explains that the land in El-Ayyat was originally allocated for agricultural activity and livestock production, calling for it to be used for agricultural and livestock projects to achieve self-sufficiency in livestock, poultry and agricultural production, noting that the authorities aim to increase agricultural exports to about USD 145 billion instead of USD 36 billion.
Shoaib proposes, speaking to Zawia3, building refrigerated warehouses to preserve and cool foodstuffs, given the presence of livestock-related and commercial activities in the area, and investing the land in industries based on agricultural production, such as meat-freezing and meat-processing plants, or fruit and vegetable preservation, which would help develop this industry and increase the area’s economic benefit.
At a time when the case of Egypt’s recovery of the El-Ayyat land after long years of legal conflict has revealed the scale of corruption and conspiracy to plunder state land, some may wonder how MP Ahmed Abdel Salam Qoura, the current representative for the Dar El-Salam constituency in Sohag, managed to re-enter political life through the gateway of the Egyptian Parliament in its current session, years after his arrest in 2016 and his accusation of seizing state land in El-Ayyat. Another question remains about the authorities’ plan for those feddans after a long battle to recover them, as followers of the El-Ayyat land file wonder whether it too will follow in the footsteps of the recent investment deals.
