The Administrative Court rejected on Tuesday a lawsuit filed by Hisham Geneina, former head of the Central Auditing Organisation (CAO), to revoke the decision of President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi that sacked him from his post.
Geneina was sacked by Al-Sisi in March 2016, while his deputy, Hisham Badawi, assumed his position. Al-Sisi dismissed him in accordance with a presidential decree he issued in July 2015 giving himself the authority to appoint, replace, or dismiss heads of regulatory bodies.
The lawsuit claimed that Geneina’s dismissal was unconstitutional, as it considered the decree contradicting the Egyptian Constitution, which stipulates that the work of these bodies should be independent from the state’s executive branches.
The case against Geneina started when a local newspaper quoted him as saying that wasted public funds amounted to EGP 600bn from 2015.
Geneina was sentenced to one year in prison by the Cairo Misdemeanour Court in July, on charges of spreading false news about corruption rates in Egypt and disrupting security and public order. He was also ordered to pay EGP 20,000 as a fine and was released on probation.
