The Cairo economic court set June 16 for the first hearing of one the largest illegal “capital investment” cases at present, involving 12 defendants.

Hany Abdel Wahab and 11 others are accused of collecting over $62 million from nearly 1,000 depositors to allegedly invest them in world stock exchanges in return of a monthly interest rate between 5% and 10%.

The defendants have created several entities, including “Star Capital for Marketing”, “Star Capital Financial Limited”, “Star Capital Financial Services” and “Star Bank Limited”, which are all not registered with the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority, to dupe depositors into paying the money.

According to investigations, the defendants practiced the illegal business activity from 2010 to 2014 and never returned back any funds to the depositors.

They used the money in buying real estate and other property items that are being evaluated by the authorities.

The public prosecutor had ordered a freeze on the defendants’ funds and a travel ban on them, with the fugitives being placed on airports’ watch lists.