Cairo Administrative Court decided on Tuesday to postpone the verdict of halting the sacking of former top auditor and former head of the Central Auditing Organization (CAO) Hesham Geneina to 24 January.
The lawsuit was filed by Geneina against President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and said that the dismissal decision that was taken by Al-Sisi is unconstitutional.
In March 2016, Al-Sisi ordered the dismissal of Geneina from his post at the CAO, according to a presidential decree that was issued in July 2015, whereby he is authorised to replace, appoint, and dismiss heads of regulatory bodies, despite the Constitution guaranteeing the independence of these institutions from the state’s executive branch. However, the lawsuit argues that Al-Sisi dismissed Geneina while there was no parliament.
The Cairo Criminal Court had issued a verdict in July 2016 against Geneina. He was sentenced to a one-year prison sentence and an EGP 20,000 bail to suspend the imprisonment decision on charges of disrupting security and public order. However, Geneina appealed the verdict.
The case started when a local newspaper published falsified statements attributed to Geneina about the size of financial corruption in the public sector. Geneina had stated that wasted public funds amounted to EGP 600bn from 2012 to 2015. Youm7 had reported that he was referring to only 2015. Geneina accordingly filed a lawsuit against Youm7. The verdict of that case might affect the case raised against Geneina for publishing false news.
Following the statements which were first published in the news in December, the Egyptian presidency denied “press reports” and ordered investigations into the claims.
