there should be investigations into corruption, into mubarak s alleged wealth, the wealth of his family. by the way, anderson, the sound of honking horns typically in cairo because of gridlock traffic and frustrated drivers, the sound tonight they re not honking their horns out of frustration. it s celebration and what s amazing about it is four or five hours ago, the streets of the city were eerily almost frighteningly empty, completely empty. we were able to drive through the city, not even pedestrians on the street and now the people have poured out into the streets and we re many neighborhoods away from tahrir square. the flag waving. street parties almost at every intersection. i ve seen fireworks and confetti. one woman, i asked her, are you scared about what s going to come next and she said, no, because the military is taking over and i feel safe with them, and with their help, one day
on tuesday apparently the finance minister in switzerland asked the banks to look into mubarak s assets that might be held in that country. but apparently according to him the banks yet do not have a clear picture of what kind of money is being held and here we see a group of people, the egyptian flag walking down the street. pity anyone stuck in traffic tonight in cairo. they are not going anywhere for quite a while. ivan watson is standing by. ivan, we ve just heard that swiss authorities are trying or are asking banks in switzerland to freeze any accounts. we hear that a lot from people now. they want whether or not they want mubarak put on trial, they want the money that he is alleged to have taken over the years. reporter: that s right. i mean that was something we started hearing, anderson, in recent days amid some news reports that he had untold wealth, and we started seeing that appear in some of the protest signs, you know, that
soon we ll be able to vote in presidential elections. anderson? and we hear those horns let s just listen to some of the sounds in cairo tonight. reporter: it s going to be a party out here all night, anderson. there have been some estimates, ivan, estimates of the mubarak fortune range wildly from people say $20 billion to $70 billion. often those estimates turn out to be completely or wildly inaccurate. $70 billion would make him the richest man in the world. that seems highly unlikely even $20 billion which is a low estimate would be an extraordinary sum, even a billion dollars, frankly or hundreds of millions of dollars would be extraordinary sums.
well. but tell me a bit more of what you re seeing as this night of celebration continues to unfold in cairo right now, fred. reporter: yeah, hala, it continues to unfold and continues to get bigger from our vantage point here. if you want to take te i look, as you can see, of course, tahrir square and that highway thoroughfare we ve been talking about that goes right through central cairo here, the crowd is getting bigger and bigger. we re seeing more cars, more cars stuck actually. more people on the streets. they ve turned this place into one big party ground, if you will. so it certainly is an amazing scene that we re able to witness up here. there s just so many people who are just trying to take in this moment, this moment that many people say they ve won their freedom. there s people down there who have come here on motorcycles, a lot of people walking around. it seems i believe we ve lost the signal there with fred pleitgen,
seeing some fireworks, wolf, over the square, again, extraordinary images, we have correspondents all throughout cairo and we are trying to give you as much of a sense in different parts of the city and just the scope of the celebrations tonight, wolf. it certainly is a celebration in cairo, the fireworks, the chanting, the singing, the happy people. a lot of them no doubt can t believe this has happened. let s listen a little bit, watch the sights and listen to the sounds. [ sounds of the crowd ]