Downtown, Cairo: Around 100 protesters were gathering in front of the Egyptian Stock Exchange (ESE). By asking the protesters why they are protesting here not in Tahrir as usual, I got the whole story.
Shafik's govt decided to reopen the ESE again tomorrow, Tuesday. Protesters' main demand there was that we can't open it now as the corrupted members of Mubarak's regime are waiting for this reopening to transfer huge amounts of money abroad. How is that? I got the answer from Dr. Ramadan Ma'rouf, a PhD researcher in political and economical sciences.
Businessmen are waiting for this scheduled reopen to:
1- Some of them can buy all the stocks they have and deposit amounts of money to the International Arab Bank (IAB) which is not subjected to any kind of regulations applied to other banks according to a treaty between Arab countries. After that, they can transfer this money they originally stole from Egyptian people by using the corrupted structure of Mubarak's regime abroad.
2- GDR: The GDR system allows domestic shares to be offered for sale globally. So here is the deals: Businessmen can buy stocks here in Egypt and go to London to resell them there in London Stock Exchange and here we go! The money is magically there in London.
Besides, reopening the ESE without any measurements from the govt will cause total collapse in the stocks prices. Also, this might expose large shares of a lot of Egyptian people-owned industries to be bought be foreign investors to find significant sectors of our economy to be run by different countries!
According to Dr. Ramadan, this reopen of the ESE will cause losses of around 70 billions LE in the first two days. Now it's clear, Shafik's govt, which has been appointed by Mubarak, doesn't care about losses and economy as much they care about how Mubarak's regime's businessmen can run away with their money and cover up any corruption leads from the past.
Update: Protesters gained a new success; the reopening of the ESE has been postponed to the next Sunday.
Neither thing can happen if protesters promise to confiscate shares currently owned by corrupt regime members once the protesters have taken control of the government. Investors will not buy shares that will be confiscated when democracy arrives. But protesters must commit to this before the exchange reopens. Show your support for confiscation by liking this page: http://on.fb.me/gKniCr .
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