Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will be brought to Cairo next week for interrogation over charges of corruption, according to an anti-corruption activist, CNN has reported. Documents filed in the case reveal that Mubarak's family has stashed the equivalent of about $150 million in secret bank accounts.
The Prosecutor General's office confirmed on Thursday that Mubarak would be brought in from Sharm El-Sheikh, the Sinai seaside resort town where he has resided since he was ousted from power by massive popular protests, to testify in the corruption case brought against him and other officials by the former member of Egyptian parliament Mustafa Bakri.
The announcement of Mubarak's impending interrogation came hours after Egypt's Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq resigned and a former transport minister was picked to appoint a new government, responding to demands by pro-democracy activists to purge Hosni Mubarak's old guard from the cabinet.
Military rulers said they had accepted the resignation of Shafiq and appointed Essam Sharaf in this place. Shafiq was appointed by Mubarak, 82, in his final days in office before he stepped down on February 11 after an 18-day popular uprising against his rule which shook the Middle East.
"The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces decided to accept the resignation of Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq and appointed Essam Sharaf to form the new government," the army said in a statement on its Facebook page.
The Muslim Brotherhood and other political groupings had been calling for Shafiq and his government, where the key defense, justice, foreign and interior ministers were all appointed during the Mubarak era, to quit.
They had urged a clean break from the 30 years of Mubarak rule and wanted a cabinet of technocrats appointed in the interim period before elections that would choose a new parliament and president, expected later this year.
Sharaf served as transport minister from 2004-06. He then returned to academia to teach as a professor at Cairo University. He received a doctorate from America's Purdue University in 1984.
As the government contends with changes in personel, complaints against former President Hosni Mubarak continue to be investigated. Egypt's public prosecutor has imposed a travel ban on the former president and his family for the duration of these investigations and ordered their assets to be frozen.