A leaked, highly confidential memorandum presented from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry to Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi revealed that the Egyptian regime made illegal concessions to get the support of US former president Donald Trump.

The memorandum, uncovered by Al Jazeera Mubasher in an investigation titled “The price of silence,” is dated 20 December 2017, and included points suggested to Al-Sisi for discussion with US former Vice-President Mike Pence, who visited Egypt then as the highest US official visiting Egypt since the visit of former President Barak Obama, in 2009. The first point in the memorandum pointed out that Egypt made recurrent attempts to get the support of Trump’s administration, even before taking office, and to improve Egypt-USA relations after deterioration in the last years of Obama, who condemned Al-Sisi’s military coup in 2013 and suspended US military aid to Egypt. However, the memorandum said that the Egyptian regime could not touch the results of such attempts. The second point unfolded the measures the Egyptian regime made “in response to the demands of the new US administration,” according to the words of the memorandum.

First of all, Egypt withdrew a draft resolution it presented to the UN Security Council to condemn Israeli settlement in the occupied territories of Palestine in 2016, in response to a demand from Donald Trump, who had not then taken office. In addition, the memorandum revealed that the Egyptian regime intervened to end the lawsuit against US citizens, who were arrested in Egypt in 2012 over funding civil society organisations in Egypt, before being released under pressure of the military council, the ruler of Egypt at that time. Such intervention revealed the absence of judicial independence in Egypt and its subjection to the ruling regime and its interests.

In a scandal of corruption, the memorandum reveals that the Egyptian regime recommended awarding a $500 million-worth bid for train tractors directly to the American company, General Electric, in spite of the presence of more competitive proposals.