Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi appointed on Tuesday Hisham Badawy as the new head of the country's Central Auditing Agency. Badawy, who approved by parliament in June as the new top auditor, served as the acting head of the agency after the dismissal of then-head Hisham Geneina in March 2016. Geneina was removed from the position and later hit with criminal charges for allegedly "spreading false news" about corruption in the public sector. In July, a Cairo misdemeanor court sentenced Geneina to one year in jail and an EGP 20,000 fine over a report he issued while head of the organisation claiming that theft by public officials had cost the country's treasury EGP 600 billion since 2012. The court has set EGP 10,000 bail for Geneina pending an appeal. The newly-appointed Badawy previously served in the State Security Prosecution, holding the post of prosecutor-general from 2005 to 2012, where he supervised a number of high-profile and controversial cases, including espionage and terror-related cases. Under former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, Badawy was transferred from the State Security Prosecution to the judiciary, where he was appointed head of the Cairo Court of Appeals. *The official exchange rate for $1 = EGP 8.78 Source: Ahram Online
