The Secret behind Majdi Rasekh: Controversial Oil Tycoon’s Still in Business?

In 1996, the daughter of Majdi Rasekh, Heidi, married Ala’a Mubarak, the late Egyptian President Mohammad Hosni Mubarak’s eldest son. Two years after the marriage, the fugitive businessman directed his investments towards natural gas, and on May 26, 1998, he established the National Gas Company as per decision No. (961) of 1998 by the General Authority for Investment and Free Zones, or GAFI.

On May 19, 2010 and months before the end of the Mubarak regime, the National Gas Company had a decision issued by the Paris Court of Appeals to withhold the funds of the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation abroad, claiming that a ruling was issued in its favor by the Cairo Regional Center for International Commercial Arbitration. The Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation was to be fined by approximately 254 million Egyptian pounds as a difference in price and dues to the gas company. This came about because of the rise in the prices of the basic requirements needed to implement the project that would deliver natural gas to residential, commercial and industrial areas in Al-Sharqiya Governorate between 1999 and 2008.

In a ruling on April 3, 2014, the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes ( ) rejected the lawsuit brought by the National Gas Company against the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation.

On January 6, 1999, the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation had signed a twenty-year franchise agreement with the National Gas Company to deliver natural gas to residential, commercial and industrial areas and to power plants in Al-Sharqiya Governorate. By this contract, the company was committed to calculating and collecting the value of the gas sold to customers and consumers and to paying the authority’s dues out of this gas value.

On June 16, 2021, the Supreme Prosecution department for Public Funds referred the following fugitive businessmen to criminal trial before the Cairo Criminal Court in case No. (5298) of 2021 of the Heliopolis criminal court and case No. (96) of 2021 of the Supreme department of Public Funds: Mohammad Majdi Hussein Rasekh, former chairman of the board of directors of the National Gas Company and the son-in-law of former President Mohammad Hosni Mubarak; Mohammad Hani Ahmad Mohammad Farid, former chairman of the board of directors of the National Gas Company; and Hussam Ridha Junainah, former chairman of the board of directors of the National Gas Company. The fugitive businessmen were accused of refusing to grant the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation its dues from the gas value collected from consumers, which was estimated at one billion Egyptian pounds.