Gov’t appoints new anti-corruption chief as predecessor face trial

Egypt’s parliament approved on Sunday the appointment of a former prosecutor as the new anti-corruption chief, state news agency MENA said, less than a week after his predecessor went on trial accused of making up lies about the scale of the problem. Parliament approved the appointment of Hisham Badawi as head of the Central Auditing […]

Egypt’s parliament approved on Sunday the appointment of a former prosecutor as the new anti-corruption chief, state news agency MENA said, less than a week after his predecessor went on trial accused of making up lies about the scale of the problem.
Parliament approved the appointment of Hisham Badawi as head of the Central Auditing Authority, Egypt’s main anti-corruption agency, with 329 of Egypt’s 596 deputies voting in his favor.
Badawi’s predecessor, Hisham Geneina, was sacked by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in March after he stirred controversy in a raft of interviews at the end of last year in which he claimed that government corruption had cost 600 billion Egyptian pounds ($67.6 billion)over a four-year period.
Sisi appointed a fact-finding commission that quickly concluded Geneina, a former judge, had misled the public. Geneina was charged this month with spreading false news about the cost of corruption. His trial began on Tuesday.