CAIRO: Former Egypt forward Mohamed Aboutrika, one of the country’s most famous sportsmen, has been sentenced to a year in jail on charges of tax evasion, local media reported on Tuesday. A commercial and financial crimes court in Cairo passed the sentence against Aboutrika in absentia on Monday, the state-run al-Ahram newspaper reported. The court found Aboutrika guilty of evading taxes on earnings of 710,000 Egyptian pounds ($40,000) for doing advertisements for a soft drinks and a telecoms firm. The paper said the court ordered the former player who now lives in Qatar to pay 20,000 pounds as a bond to turn the prison term into a suspended sentence. Aboutrika, 40, played 100 times for Egypt from 2001-13. Published in Daily Times, November 14th 2018.