The New Cairo Misdemeanours Court upheld on Thursday a suspended one-year prison sentence for Hisham Geneina, former head of the Central Auditing Organisation, state media reported. Geneina was fined EGP 20,000 and released on a EGP 10,000 bail pending his appeal.
Officially dismissed form his position in March by President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, Geneina was charged with spreading false news regarding corruption levels in Egypt.
In an interview published by the Al-Youm Al-Sabaa newspaper on 23 December 2015, Geneina said: “It is difficult to define the cost of corruption within Egyptian institutions. Yet, according to monitoring reports supervised by CAO members, we could say that corruption exceeded EGP 600bn in 2015.”
Geneina also submitted an appeal to the Administrative Court regarding his dismissal. The court will rule in the case on 17 January, according to Al-Ahram.
In a court session back in October, Geneina told reporters that appealing against the presidential decision to dismiss him from his post was not aimed at having him restored, but rather at obtaining an admission from the court that the decision violated the law and the Constitution.
The president dismissed Geneina according to a decree issued in July 2015 allowing him to dismiss heads of regulatory bodies.
