Omar al-Bashir is being investigated for money laundering after security services claimed to have found £100 million in cash at his home.
Sacks stuffed with millions of euros, Sudanese pounds and thousands of dollars were allegedly found at Omar al-Bashir’s villa, a source in the East African country’s judiciary said.
It came moments before Sudanese authorities are reported to have arrested several top military leaders from who served during the al-Bashir’s near the 30-year presidency.
Sudan’s public prosecutor has begun investigating Bashir on charges of money laundering and possession of large sums of foreign currency without legal grounds, according to a judicial source.
As much as six million euros, five million Sudanese pounds and $351,000 is claimed to have been in the villa.
‘The chief public prosecutor ordered the (former) president detained and quickly questioned in preparation to put him on trial,’ they said.
‘The public prosecution will question the former president in Kobar prison.’
Pictures published by Netherlands-based Radio Dabanga claim to show sacks of the cash seized from the presidential residence.
Footage has also circulated on social media claiming to show piles of cash that had been seized from the property.
Bashir has been arrested along with his two brothers on allegations of corruption it is claimed. Members of his former government have also been arrested.
The transitional military council (TMC) said earlier this evening that it will retire all eight of the officers ranked lieutenant general in the National Intelligence and Security Service.
Opposition groups had demanded that the security agencies be restructured.
A source in Bashir’s National Congress Party said authorities arrested the acting party head Ahmed Haroun, former first vice president Ali Osman Taha, former Bashir aide Awad al-Jaz, the secretary general of the Islamic movement Al-Zubair Ahmed Hassan and former parliament speaker Ahmed Ibrahim al-Taher.
The source also said parliament speaker Ibrahim Ahmed Omar and presidential aide Nafie Ali Nafie were under house arrest.
Mr Bashir, who ruled Sudan for nearly 30 years, was toppled on April 11 by the Sudanese military after months of public protest.
He is now held at a high-security prison and will be questioned about the cash, sources said. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged genocide crimes in Sudan’s Darfur region, but the military has said they intend to try the former ruler in Sudan.
Hassan Bashir, a professor of political science at the University of Neelain, said the measures against Bashir are intended as a message to other figures associated with his rule that they are not above the law.
‘The trial is a step that the military council wants to take to satisfy the protesters by presenting al-Bashir for trial,’ he said.
Bashir survived several armed rebellions, economic crises, and attempts by the West to turn him into a pariah during his 30-year rule before he was toppled in a military coup.
At a sit-in outside Sudan’s Ministry of Defence that began on April 6, protesters, who slept on the pavement, stood besides posters of Bashir that called on the ICC to put him on trial.DailyMail