Well well well. The Guardian:

President Hosni Mubarak’s family fortune could be as much as $70bn (£43.5bn) according to analysis by Middle East experts, with much of his wealth in British and Swiss banks or tied up in real estate in London, New York, Los Angeles and along expensive tracts of the Red Sea coast. After 30 years as president and many more as a senior military official, Mubarak has had access to investment deals [note the careful phrasing] that have generated hundreds of millions of pounds in profits. Most of those gains have been taken offshore and deposited in secret bank accounts or invested in upmarket homes and hotels. … His sons, Gamal and Alaa, are also billionaires. A protest outside Gamal’s ostentatious home at 28 Wilton Place in Belgravia, central London, highlighted the family’s appetite for western trophy assets. Amaney Jamal, a political science professor at Princeton University, said the estimate of $40bn-70bn was comparable with the vast wealth of leaders in other Gulf countries.

“Investment deals”? I suppose you have to acquire it to invest it, don’t you. The article later says:

There are only sketchy details of exactly where the Mubaraks have generated their wealth and its final destination.

After which it attempts to sketch in those details with well phrased kid-glove speculations. Don’t be fooled.

This, by the way, is why Scott Horton says Mubarak has to plan his exit very carefully — prosecution for (a) corruption and (b) criminal brutality is all the rage these days.

GP