An Egyptian Islamist former head of a Swedish science school has gone missing from Gothenburg and has failed to report to the police after being accused of pilfering hundreds of thousands of euros in Swedish state funding and sent them to Malta and Saudi Arabia.
An investigation by two Swedish newspapers – Expressen and Doku – accused Abdel Nasser El Nadi of having misappropriated large amounts of funds from a school he had been running and report that he sent money abroad to a private investment fund in Malta and to a bank in Saudi Arabia.
The man has reportedly since gone missing and has not signed in at the Gothenburg police station as required, leading to fears that he may have absconded from the country. Nor has he appeared lately at the mosque he regularly frequents.
In May of this year El Nadi had been taken into custody by the Swedish Security Police (SÄPO) and the Swedish Migration Board, along with several other people, as part of a crackdown on the threat of Islamist terrorism in the country.
He was released in September from the Migration Board’s detention centre where he had been placed at the specific request of the SÄPO.
The SÄPO believes that El Nadi is one of the main players behind an increasingly violent Islamist environment in Sweden. They also believe that he is at least partially accountable for the relatively large numbers of people from the Gothenburg area had taken part in Islamic State hostilities in Syria, actions for which El Nadi has repeatedly expressed his support.
El Nadi is also reportedly a central figure in the Salafist movement and has been accused of being a recruiter for terrorists. In fact, at least four Islamic State fighters returning from Syria have reportedly worked at the school. An employee of the school had also been convicted in 2017 for soliciting funding for terrorism.
Salafism is a reform branch or revivalist movement within Sunni Islam that developed in El Nadi’s native Egypt in the late 19th century in response to Western European imperialism.
But since this month El Nadi has apparently gone missing after failing to report regularly to the police under the conditions of his release from detention.
El Nadi cannot be deported from Sweden to Egypt as he risks being subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment by the authorities upon his return, even though last month the Swedish government had stated that he posed a security threat and should be expelled from the country.
El Nadi was the owner and principal of the Gothenburg School of Science. In September 2019, the school changed its name to Sapphire School after it was sold. The science school is registered as non-denominational free school and between 2013 and last summer it had received about €21 million in state funding.
El Nadi reportedly sent school money to Saudi Arabia and Malta
But El Nadi has reportedly transferred hundreds of thousands, if not even millions, of euros to accounts in other countries.
Investigations have revealed that as recently as February of this year he had sent some €400,000 from a company he co-chairs, which is addressed in care of at the school itself, to a private investment account in Malta which he shares with an unnamed Saudi citizen. The science school has also transferred large sums to a bank in Saudi Arabia.
In fact, just a few days after the €400,000 transaction to Malta in February 2019, another person linked to the El Nadi Group is reported to have travelled to Saudi Arabia, where Swedish authorities were able to confirm that he logged in to the bank’s system with his banking ID.
Amongst others, it is to that account with Riyadh bank in Saudi Arabia that the school transferred hundreds of thousands into different tranches.
The newspapers revealed how El Nadi’s education group, which includes several independent school activities that are funded by state funds, copious amounts of funds abroad, with bank statements showing how that money is regularly transferred between various companies and people closely linked to El Nadi and the science school.
Apart from the February transfer of funds to Malta, investigations have also shown that other companies affiliated with El Nadi have transferred large sums to an investment account in Malta owned by El Nadi with a Saudi citizen.
El Nadi’s lawyer however, insists that everything has been done ‘by the book.
Lars-Erik Olsson confirmed with the Swedish press that that through his work for El Nadi that he only knew of the transfer of funds to Malta, and insists that everything, as far he could see, had been handled correctly. As for where the money had actually come from, he was less committal, speculating that the school could have been operating at a profit.
