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Court postpones verdict halting Hesham Geneina's dismissal to 21 February Geneina was dismissed from his position as the top auditor by a presidential decree in March 2016
The Administrative Court postponed on Tuesday the verdict of halting the sacking of former top auditor and former head of the Central Auditing Organisation (CAO) Hesham Geneina to 21 February. The lawsuit was filed by Geneina against President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, claiming that the dismissal decision that was taken by the president was unconstitutional. Geneina was sacked from his position by Al-Sisi in March 2016. Al-Sisi issued a presidential decree in July 2015 whereby he gave himself the authority to appoint, replace, or dismiss heads of regulatory bodies. This decree contradicts the Egyptian Constitution stipulating that the work of these bodies should be independent from the state's executive branches. The case of Geneina originally surfaced when a local newspaper published falsified statements attributed to Geneina about the size of financial corruption in the public sector. Geneina said that wasted public funds amounted to EGP 600bn from 2012 to 2015. The privately-owned Youm El-Saba newspaper had reported that he was referring to only 2015. Geneina filed a lawsuit against the newspaper. He is now being tried on charges of disrupting security and public order. 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. However, he appealed the verdict and the trial is still ongoing.
