On Thursday, July 28, a Cairo court has sentenced Hisham Geneina, the former chief of the Central Auditing Authority (CAA), to a year in jail and a fine of 20,000 Egyptian pounds (EGP) for 'disseminating false news that was harmful to state institutions and threatened public peace.' The charges were based on remarks Geneina made in an interview with Youm7 daily newspaper in December 2015. In it, he estimated that corruption had cost the budget over 600 billion EGP (around $72 billion at the official exchange rate) between 2012 and 2015. Geneina will appeal the verdict and remain free on bail of 10,000 EGP.

As the head of the CAA, Geneina had enjoyed constitutional guarantees of independence and protection from dismissal. Nevertheless, on March 28, 2016, he was dismissed by a presidential decree and replaced by Hisham Badawy. His conflict with presidential authorities is rooted in his work on a report estimating the scale of corruption, as well as public statements on the topic. In January 2016, the prosecutor-general has issued a gag order on publishing of details from said report, while the president has established a fact-finding committee tasked with debunking Geneina's claims. Geneina's case was referred to the court in June 2016, with the prosecution arguing that cases of mere 'waste of public funds' were erroneously classified as 'corruption'.

Read more (Mada Masr) >>
Read more (Al Ahram) >>
Read more (Youm 7) >>

The report entitled ‘Analysis of the cost of corruption in some sectors in Egypt’ has been eventually released by an independent Egyptian paper Mada Masr. Its journalists have analysed the documents and pointed out significant methodological weaknesses that make it impossible to support the figure of 600 billion EGP. However, in their opinion, the report does show and prove real cases and mechanisms of widespread corruption. Egypt is ranked by Transparency International as 88^th of 168 countries on the Corruption Perception Index (higher position means less corruption) with a score of 36 (where 0 means ‘highly corrupt’ and 100 means ‘very clean’).

'Analysis of the cost of corruption in some sectors in Egypt' report in Arabic >>
Amr Adly's commentary on the report (Mada Masr) >>
Wael Gamal's commentary on the report (Mada Masr) >>
Transparency International profile of Egypt >>