The National Security prosecution authorities declared Monday that head of the Central Auditing Organisation (CAO) Hisham Geneina had made misleading statement on the value of money lost due to state corruption, estimating it at EGP 600bn in 2015.
In a statement aired by state TV, the prosecution said that amount of corruption covered the period from 2008 to 2012 and not 2015 or a slightly larger period. It added that Geneina’s report was inaccurate and included “repeated count of incidents of corruption over the years”.
The prosecution further accused Geneina of power misuse by collecting and keeping important information and documents on corruption, and that it was not within CAO authority to investigate corruption.
Following Geneina’s statements which were first published in the news, the Egyptian presidency denied “press reports” and ordered investigations into the claims.
President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi formed a ‘fact-finding’ committee headed by the head of the Administrative Control Authority (ACA) to examine what was communicated to the press and present its own report to the “public opinion”.
The parliament was given the task to rule between a report presented by the CAO and another by the presidential committee, but the parliament dropped the case leaving it in the hands of prosecution authorities.
MPs Anwar Sadat and Alaa Abdul Moneim commented to a local TV channel after the prosecution’s statement criticising such decision, claiming that the parliament should have investigated corruption claims of both reports as part of its monitoring role, working independently from the prosecution’s investigations.
