The family's fortune is rumoured to be in the range of 40 to 70 billion U.S. dollars.
Britain's Guardian newspaper in concert wtih Middle East experts and state- led security investigations into allegations of corruption against the ruling National Demotratic Party, have popularized this figure after their report was published in the early days of the Egyptian Revolution.The report alleges that this wealth is distributed between accounts in British and Swiss banks, and real estate in Britain, the United States and Egypt.
The public furor that was already mounting in this climate of popular dissent, has been incensed further and fed by the timely publication of these reports of a giant scale of family and entourage- wealth. News of such obscene wealth on the scale of Gulf Oil magnates has only fuelled the movement of massive protests , which have spanned nearly a month.