Egyptian court sentences former minister to five years

An Egyptian court convicted former Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid in absentia on Saturday and sentenced him to 5 years in prison for profiteering and squandering public funds, the state news agency MENA said. Rachid, a regular at the World Economic Forum in Davos, lost his job in late January and fled abroad, only days after the eruption of the mass uprising that later ousted Hosni Mubarak.
He was an important face for Egypt in the commodities market as former minister of trade overseeing global wheat prices in the world's biggest wheat-importing country. The Cairo court ruled that Rachid unlawfully seized public money from a government export development fund.