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1st LD: Egypt court jails former top auditor for spreading "mass corruption" rumor

Xinhua, July 28, 2016 Adjust font size:

An Egyptian court decided Thursday to jail a former top auditor for one year for spreading rumor about corruption involving billions of dollars in Egypt, state TV reported.

Hisham Genina, former chief of Egypt's Central Auditing Authority (CAA), made statements late 2015, when he was in service, alleging mass corruption in the country involving over 600 billion Egyptian pounds (67.5 billion U.S. dollars) in 2015 alone.

Besides the jail term, Genina will also have to pay a fine of 20,000 Egyptian pounds.

The sentence, handed down by New Cairo Misdemeanor Court, can still be appealed.

In January, an Egyptian committee formed by order of President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi refuted Genina's charges against state institutions of massive corruption as "misleading and exaggerated."

Genina was sacked in March by a presidential decree.

Corruption has been deep-rooted in Egypt over the past few decades. Several former senior officials have been referred to trials over the past few years for relevant charges.

An Egyptian court confirmed in January a three-year jail sentence against ousted President Hosni Mubarak and his two sons for squandering 125 million Egyptian pounds of the budget allocated for the maintenance of presidential palaces. Endit