Cairo - Egyptian multi-millionaire and former member of parliament, Rami Lakah, has agreed to a final settlement for debts once worth billions of Egyptian pounds, the daily al-Masry al-Youm reported Saturday. According to the deal, Lakah, who built a medical-supplies empire in the 1990s with the help of large government contracts, will pay back 743 million Egyptian pounds (133 million dollars) in debts to the Bank of Egypt.
Lakah, now in London, will pay the bank 29 million dollars in cash, and 99.6 million dollars in quarterly installments over 10 years, the daily said.
The former MP will pay back an additional 26 million out of the 69 million dollars he owed the National Bank of Egypt, the Arab African Bank and the Egyptian Saudi Investment Bank, his lawyer, Tariq Abdel- Aziz, told al-Masry al-Youm.
Abdel-Aziz said the agreements, coming after Lakah's repayment of 216 million dollars in bad debts, would completely settle Lakah's debts to Egyptian banks.
When Lakah left Egypt at the height of the country's liquidity crisis in 2000, he became notorious, with some Egyptian journalists blaming him and his bad debts for contributing to the crisis.
Popularly, the businessman's name became a verb in Egyptian slang: "To Lakah" came to mean "to default on a debt."
His defaults, alongside those of other prominent businessmen at the time, made banks less willing to lend, other Egyptian entrepreneurs complained at the time.
Lakah maintained at the time that he had always intended to pay his debts, but that his hands were tied until the government paid him millions of Egyptian pounds for goods and services his medical-supplies companies had supplied.
