In the six months from January to June this year, Egypt lost a total of LE26 billion because of administrative corruption, compared to LE2 billion reported in 2010, a judicial official has said. Judge Taymour Mostafa Kamel, head of the Administrative Prosecution Authority (APA), revealed that since the outbreak of the revolution people have shown a tendency to file complaints about administrative corruption, and as a result the APA has investigated thousands of cases. These investigations show the loss of billions of pounds on a monthly basis due to corruption. The APA is a judicial body that was established in 1958 to monitor and investigate civil servants at all ministry and state agency levels. It has the mandate to hand over the accused to criminal courts. In an interview with weekly newspaper Akbar Al-Youm, Kamel revealed that from January until 30 June 2011 the APA accepted 40,213 cases on administrative corruption. He said the APA has investigated 28,466 cases so far. Kamel said that in addition to those cases, the APA has also received about 40,000 complaints from citizens concerning financial and administrative corruption in the state administrative system. He accused former President Hosni Mubarak's regime of spreading corruption and said that Mubarak repeatedly tried to obstruct the APA from carrying out its duties and refused to enact a law giving them full immunity. According to the Berlin-based Transparency International, Egypt maintained a weak position in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) from 1998 to 2009. It ranks 111 out of 180 countries in the most recent CPI, published in 2009. Despite the revolution's effectiveness in urging people to report cases of corruption, so far Essam Sharaf's government has not given immunity to APA in investigating and monitoring corruption, said Kamel. He added the government has ignored the results of APA investigations, and it considers the APA's findings as non-binding recommendations.
