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Egyptian court suspends imprisonment term against former top auditor

Xinhua, December 23, 2016 Adjust font size:

An Egyptian appeals court on Thursday suspended a one-year jail sentence against former top auditor who was convicted of spreading rumors about corruption, state-run Ahram Online website reported.

Hisham Genina, former chief of Egypt's Central Auditing Authority (CAA), made statements in 2015, when he was in service, alleging mass corruption in the country involving billions of Egyptian pounds in 2015 alone.

He was sentenced to prison in July for spreading false news with the goal of harming public interest. Besides the jail term, Genina paid a fine of 20,000 Egyptian pounds (around 1000 U.S. dollars).

The appeals court suspended the sentence on Thursday for three years, with the sentence to be put into effect if the defendant is convicted of another crime within that period, according to Ahram.

Geneina was sacked by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi in March after a fact-finding committee investigating his report on corruption concluded that he had misled the public by exaggerating the scale of corruption.

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. Enditem