Mohamed Ali

Starting on 2 September 2019, Ali claimed on online social networks that he had worked in the construction industry for 15 years under army contracts, building five villas for colleagues of Sisi and a palace for Sisi in a military camp. Ali accused Sisi of wasting public funds and "[taking] low-level corruption to a new level". Ali's videos outline specific incidents and directly accuse well-known military individuals, including Major-Generals Kamel al-Wazir and Essam al-Kholy. Egyptian authorities ran a media campaign attacking Ali. According to Omar Said and Rana Mamdouh writing in Mada Masr, the governmental campaign "did not refute the substance of [Ali's] claims."

On 23 September 2019, Ali stated that "officers" had been following him in Spain for two weeks, and that he had been "hiding and running away from them". Ali stated that the officers wished to kill him and that he was too tired to "run any more". Ali stated that Spanish authorities were responsible for his safety and that if he were "killed in Spain," then that would "[prove] that Europe is a liar just like the United States and is willing to give up anybody."

Ali states that he represents neither the Muslim Brotherhood, nor any faction of the Egyptian armed forces. He said in a late October 2019 interview with Middle East Eye that in response to his videos, he had been contacted by many groups, and that the opposition to el-Sisi had become unified. He stated, "leftists, secularists, Muslim Brotherhood, liberals, all of them are now with me."

On 28 December 2019, the day before the Egyptian National Action Group (ENAG) was officially launched with the aim of replacing the Egyptian government, Ali announced the "Egyptian Consensus Document", which he claimed represented the consensus of a wide range of the Egyptian opposition.

Ali was privately critical of el-Sisi. Around 2017, Kamel el-Wazir, the head of the army engineering authority, obtained an audio recording of Ali mocking el-Sisi and other generals. Ali applied for residency in Spain and settled there with his family, completing the move in August 2018 with the end of his children's school term.

Ali started working as a contractor with Etisalat. He gradually came into closer and closer contract with senior army officials, including el-Sisi as defence minister in 2012. High-level military construction deals were, according to Ali, made by verbal deals, with no written contracts, and the expectation that construction would start immediately, without waiting for plans to be made.

Mohamed Ali (also: Aly; born 18 January 1978) is an Egyptian building contractor living in exile in Spain who worked for 15 years with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Sisi's colleagues building villas and a palace. In September 2019, Ali circulated videos accusing Sisi of corruption. The online circulation of videos snowballed, with others including Wael Ghonim joining in the anti-Sisi criticism. Ali called for mass anti-Sisi street protests which started on 20 September 2019 across Egypt. On 28 December 2019, Ali released the "Egyptian Consensus Document" with a list of four key principles and four key actions for replacing the Egyptian government, which he claimed represented the consensus of a wide range of the Egyptian opposition.

Ali was born in Giza in 1978. According to Ali, he started work at the age of 15 in his father's gold shop in order to support his parents and siblings financially. He quit two years later, and tried "maybe 13 different jobs". Ali had earlier avoided military conscription and contact with the armed forces, worrying that he would have remained at a low rank because of his low grades, a lack of formal qualifications, and "a bit of a temper".