The dispute between Akmal Kortam, head of the Conservative Party and former owner of El Tahrir newspaper, and the Journalists Syndicate has reignited. The friction followed a statement by syndicate head Khaled Elbalshy, who accused Kortam of “ignoring the rights of dozens of journalists” who worked at the paper.
Former El Tahrir journalists said they had won final court rulings awarding them compensation but have been unable to enforce them, while Kortam’s legal representative said that Kortam was never among the newspaper’s managers or legal representatives.
Elbalshy previously criticized a statement by the Civil Democratic Movement that had voiced solidarity with Kortam over the state’s demolition of part of his Nile-front mansion. Elbalshy said Kortam had disregarded the rights of dozens of El Tahrir’s former journalists, who were thrown out of work and, in some cases, denied compensation awarded to them by the courts.
The movement, he said, rushed to defend Kortam under the guise of protecting private property but had failed to take a comparable stance on the journalists’ crisis, despite some movement leaders being fully aware of the case’s details.
The Civil Democratic Movement issued a statement on May 29, 2026, which it later deleted, condemning the government’s demolition of the mansion. The coalition had stepped in to defend Kortam because he heads a party participating in the movement.
The deleted statement linked the demolition to previous decisions by the state to demolish historic cemeteries, triggering an internal crisis that forced the movement to issue a clarification and apology.
Kortam’s legal office responded to Elbalshy’s statement on June 2, stating that El Tahrir’s parent company is a joint-stock company with several shareholders, including Kortam as its main financier. The office emphasized that the organization’s management was independent of shareholders, and that Kortam was not among the newspaper’s directors or legal representatives.
According to the statement, the outlet suffered a severe crisis after its website was blocked in May 2019, causing it to lose its main source of income alongside the suspension of the print edition due to a legal dispute over the trademark. Management, it said, continued paying employees’ salaries and dues for four months despite the halt in operations.
The office also said management attempted to resume work with a plan to develop the print edition, but several journalists declared a strike and a sit‑in inside the paper’s headquarters in September 2019, escalating the crisis and sending the dispute to the labor courts.
According to the statement, the labor courts issued several rulings finding the strike to be in breach of legal rules and ordering the dismissal of participating staff. The Court of Appeal upheld the rulings, making them final. The office stressed that Kortam was not a party to managing the dispute or any related lawsuits.
The statement said the newspaper’s management contacted the Journalists Syndicate more than once to intervene to lift the block on the website, which it described as the main cause of the crisis. Those efforts, however, yielded no results, leading to worsening financial losses and the institution’s suspension of work.
Moreover, Kortam’s legal office criticized the syndicate for continuing to issue membership cards to some dismissed journalists as though they were still employed there, despite final court rulings confirming their termination, the paper’s closure, and its entry into liquidation proceedings.
For his part, Syndicate Secretary‑General Gamal Abdel Rahim told Al Manassa that El Tahrir’s journalists chose to stage a sit‑in inside the paper’s headquarters and did not go on strike. They filed official reports about the sit‑in to demand their rights and kept working until the last moment, he said.
Abdel Rahim added that the syndicate council, then headed by Diaa Rashwan, now Minister of State for Information, held a meeting of its full board inside the paper’s headquarters and appealed to officials to step in and resolve the crisis, but they failed to respond.
Abdel Rahim cited the death of journalist Mohamed Mesbah, El Tahrir’s correspondent in Ismailia, explaining that when his wife went to obtain a letter addressed to the social insurance authority to receive his pension, the newspaper’s management rejected her request.
He said the syndicate still issues membership cards under El Tahrir’s name, treating this as a natural right of its members because they had continued working until the end. It was the management, he said, that closed the headquarters and froze their social insurance files. Cases between the two sides remain in the courts, he noted.
The newspaper’s former editor‑in‑chief, Ibrahim Mansour, told Al Manassa that it was Kortam who decided to stop the print edition in 2016, as he was preparing to run in the parliamentary elections.
Mansour said he was personally informed of the decision at a meeting in Kortam’s home that was also attended by journalist Anwar El Hawary. As the company’s sole shareholder, he said, Kortam held firm on stopping the print edition despite repeated attempts to persuade him to keep it going, even as a weekly rather than a daily publication.
According to Mansour, “Kortam tried to get rid of the newspaper’s name altogether in preparation for running in the parliamentary elections on the For the Love of Egypt list.”
The former editor-in-chief said he was arbitrarily dismissed from the newspaper and sought to obtain his financial dues amicably as one of the newspaper’s founders, but his requests were rejected. He therefore resorted to the courts and, in 2018, obtained a final ruling awarding him 620,000 Egyptian pounds (about $12,000) in compensation, but he has not been able to enforce it to date.
Responding to the legal representative’s statement that Kortam was not among El Tahrir’s legal representatives, Mansour said, “Akmal was board chair and legal representative, even if at times he delegated a legal representative from among his employees at his other companies. This is a tactic some businessmen use to evade legal responsibility, especially in the field of journalism.”
Lawyer Malek Adly told Al Manassa that the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR) defended several El Tahrir journalists, including Ibrahim Mansour and Kareem Ibrahim.
He also noted that ECESR had already obtained a final ruling in Mansour’s favor awarding him 620,000 pounds in compensation in 2018, but it has not been enforced to date. He added that the value of the compensation, adjusted for exchange-rate fluctuations, is now equivalent to about 1.55 million pounds. Kareem Ibrahim also obtained a ruling awarding him 24,000 pounds ($460) in compensation, which has likewise not been enforced.
Adly explained that the newspaper has never been legally liquidated, and that management is using evasive maneuvers to avoid enforcing court rulings, including relocating its headquarters multiple times.
