Former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak said that he was a victim of defamation and threatened lawsuits in his first comments since he was ousted in a popular uprising, aired Sunday on Al-Arabiya television.
The former president said that he was prepared to assist any investigations into his family's alleged assets abroad, as pressure mounts on the ruling military to try him for corruption and other crimes.
Mubarak said that he and his family were the victims of "unjust campaigns and false claims that seek to ruin my reputation and challenge my integrity and my... military and political history," he said.
The 82-year-old added he was prepared to assist the "public prosecutor to ask the foreign ministry of Egypt to communicate with all foreign ministries in the world asking them to reveal our assets abroad," he said.
Mubarak criticised the media for reporting that he had "large properties" abroad, and denied he had foreign bank accounts.
"I reserve my legal rights toward whoever tried to ruin me and my family's reputation," he said in the audio message broadcast on the pan-Arab news network.
{{/usCountry}}"I reserve my legal rights toward whoever tried to ruin me and my family's reputation," he said in the audio message broadcast on the pan-Arab news network.
{{/usCountry}}The military announced earlier this month that it appointed a panel to investigate the former president, but it has been criticised for delays in holding him and other former regime officials accountable.
His younger son Gamal, once widely seen as his anointed heir, faces questioning by a corruption panel that has already remanded the former president's chief of staff.
Mubarak, his wife Suzanne and their two sons Alaa and Gamal and their wives have already been banned from travel and had their assets frozen.
The first member of Mubarak's regime to face trial was much reviled former interior minister Habib al-Adly, whose security forces had wide powers of arrest under the emergency law.