CAIRO—There’s a new type of criminal in Egypt.
Those who deal in, umm, sugar.
Last week, an Egyptian court sentenced a shop owner to five years in jail and an $11,000 fine for hoarding supplies of sugar instead of selling them to customers, according to local news reports. And a few days earlier, police arrested and jailed a waiter as he walked on the street carrying 22 pounds of sugar.
His crime? Prosecutors accused the waiter of stockpiling sugar, a government subsidized commodity, with the intent of profiting by selling it to stores at a higher prices.
Egypt is in the midst of a sugar crisis. In a country where sugar is used in abundance, to sweeten traditional dishes and flavor multiple doses of Arabic tea every day, a nationwide shortage of sugar has spiked prices and shaken up the population - and the politicians.
Some 2,000 tons of sugar stocks were seized over the weekend from one of Egypt’s largest food producers.
The arrest are part of a widespread police operation targeting dealers of sugar on the black market. The government also set up a hotline last week for citizens to report incidents of stockpiling of sugar, as well as other staple commodities such as rice.