In January 2025, several MPs submitted parliamentary information requests to Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and Communications and Information Technology Minister Amr Talaat over judges and judicial advisers seconded to Egypt’s National Postal Authority. They alleged that payments to the advisers exceeded the statutory maximum wage.
Documents obtained by Zawia3 identify secondments and advisory roles spanning several bodies and companies. One prominent case is Mohamed Ahmed Abboud, a senior member of the State Council and son of its president, Ahmed Abboud. His work at the Postal Authority and attendance at meetings of two affiliated companies raise questions about conflicts of interest and the use of influence.
The documents also include a decision issued by the State Council president in late 2024 regulating secondments. A prohibition on secondment to more than one organisation had been adopted in 2014. The newer decision contains an exception for attending board meetings as the organisation’s legal adviser, which critics say accommodates Abboud’s son and others in comparable situations.
The dispute centres on both the legality of these arrangements and whether the payments comply with wage limits, putting the government’s enforcement of remuneration rules under parliamentary scrutiny.
Parliamentary scrutiny
MP Mohamed Abdel Rahman Radi, secretary of the House of Representatives’ Defence and National Security Committee, submitted an information request of which Zawia3 obtained a copy. It invoked Article 134 of the Constitution and Article 212 of parliament’s internal rules, asking the prime minister and communications minister to respond to alleged irregularities at the Postal Authority, particularly payments to seconded judicial advisers above the maximum wage.
Abdel Moneim Emam, head of the Al Adl Party and secretary of parliament’s Planning and Budget Committee, submitted another request, published on the party’s official page. It questioned the role of the Postal Authority’s former chair, Sherif Farouk, who was minister of supply when this investigation was published, in the management of Post for Investment and Post for Distribution.
Emam cited Decisions Nos. 227 and 3998 of 2022, under which Dr Mohamed Ayoub and Mohamed Abboud were assigned to represent the Postal Authority on legal matters involving its subsidiaries, with bonuses and allowances.
He sought questioning of the communications minister about the amounts paid to both advisers and whether they exceeded the legal ceiling. He also requested a detailed statement from the authority listing all seconded advisers and their salaries, bonuses and other entitlements.
Dalia El Baz questioned by MPs
On January 27, 2025, Madbouly appointed Dalia Abdallah Mohamed El Baz chair of the National Postal Authority for one year, effective that day. Her appointment was also discussed by parliament’s Communications Committee that day.
Zawia3 obtained video of the parliamentary discussion, during which the newly appointed chair faced questions about Farouk’s involvement in subsidiary management and the decisions assigning the advisers to attend to the companies’ legal affairs while receiving additional payments.
MPs demanded a clear response on what the advisers had been paid, whether those amounts exceeded wage limits, and the number and entitlements of all judicial advisers seconded to the authority.
Video of the parliamentary discussion on legal advisers’ assignments and payments at the National Postal Authority.
A decade without the required legislation
The documents, together with accounts from two State Council vice-presidents who requested anonymity, point to the continued absence of a comprehensive law regulating judicial secondments more than a decade after the Constitution required one.
On September 8, 2014, the State Council’s Special Council for Administrative Affairs, chaired by its then president, Dr Gamal Nada, issued a decision prohibiting members from being seconded to more than one organisation. Those with multiple assignments were instructed to notify the council’s general secretariat and renew only one.
The decision was not a substitute for the legislation mandated by Article 239 of the 2014 Constitution. That provision gave parliament five years to regulate assignments and end full or partial secondments outside judicial bodies, committees with judicial jurisdiction, justice administration or election oversight. Its text is also available in the State Information Service’s constitutional publication.
On November 28, 2018, the State Council’s legislation department received a draft law from the cabinet, but it was not enacted at that time. On February 22, 2023, the Justice Ministry announced completion of a new draft after years of study. The investigation reported that it remained unenacted by February 2025, leaving judicial bodies’ own councils to regulate secondments in practice.
On October 1, 2024, State Council president Ahmed Abdel Hamid Abboud issued Decision No. 775 of 2024. Its first article prohibited combining a secondment as an organisation’s legal adviser with membership of its board or the board of an affiliated organisation or company.
It then added an exception: the prohibition would not apply where the seconded adviser attended board meetings in the capacity of the organisation’s legal adviser. Critics describe this wording as tailored to permit arrangements involving several entities.
The State Council president’s son
Documents obtained by Zawia3 show that Mohamed Ahmed Abboud was assigned to the National Postal Authority and attended board meetings of Post for Investment and Post for Distribution.
A separate dispute concerns remuneration for representing the authority in those companies. Opinion No. 166, issued on February 13, 2021, by the General Assembly of the State Council’s Fatwa and Legislation Departments, concluded that Postal Authority representatives on Post for Investment’s board were not entitled to shares of distributed profits, other payments under any description or benefits in kind.
The opinion required those sums to be returned to the authority, with exceptions for payments linked to executive positions, such as executive chair or managing director, and reimbursement of actual expenses under the company’s rules.
The Postal Authority’s chair asked Post for Investment to recover the payments in line with that opinion. The company, however, rejected the request on the grounds set out in its memorandum and refused repayment. Judicial and parliamentary sources said a similar dispute occurred at Post for Distribution.
“A constitutional and legal violation”
Emam tells Zawia3 that assigning State Council advisers to several entities within the Postal Authority and its subsidiaries violates both legal and constitutional requirements.
The authority already has legal advisers, he says. MPs were therefore surprised by Farouk’s decision authorising advisers seconded to the authority to attend the two companies’ board meetings and receive payments from those companies.
Emam argues that subsidiary boards are entitled to decide which advisers they use, while the authority and each company have separate legal personalities. In his view, the same person cannot be seconded to several of them simultaneously.
He also argues that making subsidiaries bear the cost of advisers assigned to the authority conflicts with investment law and the rules governing secondments. Multiple assignments, he says, undermine the maximum-wage rules and should cease immediately.
Some advisers cite their coverage by judicial legislation as a reason the wage ceiling does not apply, Emam says. He maintains that any such exception relates to judicial remuneration, not additional payments from executive bodies subject to the maximum-wage law.
According to Emam, El Baz said she had been surprised by the arrangements and took urgent action to stop company payments to the advisers. He says she informed them that future attendance, if needed, would be solely as advisers to the Postal Authority, without additional remuneration. At the time of publication, MPs were awaiting implementation.
Allegations of wasted public money
Radi tells Zawia3 that his concerns extend from an advertising campaign costing millions to payments he alleges were improperly made to legal advisers.
He cites Mohamed Ahmed Abboud’s roles at the Postal Authority and two subsidiaries. Abboud had been at the authority since 2018, when he was no older than 35, Radi says. He alleges that Abboud received EGP 4 million in the most recent financial year across the three entities, citing an Accountability State Authority report referenced in the parliamentary request.
Radi accuses the State Council president of tailoring the October 2024 decision so that his son and others could maintain multiple assignments and receive several payments.
“How can the State Council president, whose son is seconded, add a clause permitting assignments to more than one organisation?” — MP Mohamed Abdel Rahman Radi
Radi says the decision should have been referred to the council’s Fatwa and Legislation General Assembly to protect integrity and transparency, in keeping with the judicial principle of recognising situations that create an appearance of compromised impartiality.
Conflicts of interest
Radi criticises Abboud’s involvement in signing a memorandum to the communications minister that sought to prevent implementation of the opinion requiring recovery of payments. He says Abboud justified non-implementation on the basis that the requesting organisation did not accept the General Assembly’s view.
“Since when is the law applied according to acceptance or rejection?” Radi asks.
He describes disorder in the secondment of legal advisers across ministries and government bodies, arguing that it places a substantial burden on their budgets. He says the State Council dominates these assignments and cites 12 advisers in Cairo governorate and six in the Local Development Ministry.
“Why all these seconded advisers when every ministry and government authority has a legal department? Should we abolish those departments?” he asks. If specialist judicial expertise is necessary, he argues, it should come from experienced senior judges rather than younger members with limited practical experience.
Radi asks whether, after June 2025, Mohamed Abboud would continue receiving the same substantial payments or whether the assignment would end once the circumstances behind the EGP 4 million total in 2024 had changed. At publication, he was awaiting the communications minister’s answer.
A route to executive influence
Nasser Amin, head of the Justice Support Foundation at the Arab Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession, tells Zawia3 that secondment is a financial inducement through which executive authorities seek influence over judges in the Middle East. He describes secondment and loan arrangements as among the serious problems facing Arab judicial systems.
The 2014 Constitution recognised a practice used for years, including under former president Hosni Mubarak before the January 25, 2011 uprising, Amin says. Assigning judges as advisers to non-judicial bodies creates a dangerous dual role: the judge becomes part of both the judicial system and the administration being advised.
In Amin’s assessment, this dual role opens the door to corruption and gives the executive a means of influencing judges, particularly State Council judges who hear citizens’ disputes with the government.
He calls for such arrangements to stop immediately and for the state to respect the Constitution. Judicial institutions should refrain from secondments and loans that, in his view, allow ruling authorities to compromise their independence.
Amin says judges have long recognised the danger. He recalls recommendations from the first Arab Justice Conference in Beirut in 1999, organised by the Arab Center with the International Commission of Jurists and the Beirut Bar Association. The Beirut Declaration, he says, rejected appointments and secondments used to control judges.
He also cites the 2003 Cairo Declaration on Judicial Independence, developed with the United Nations Development Programme, and the Egyptian Judges Club’s first Justice Conference in 1986. Both, he says, called for an end to the practice. He argues that international standards repeatedly identify secondment as a threat to judicial independence and a route for executive influence.
A “black hole” in the justice system
Mohamed Hamed Salem, a legal expert and lawyer before the Court of Cassation and Supreme Constitutional Court, tells Zawia3 that Article 239 imposed a clear legislative obligation. By the original publication date in February 2025, more than eleven years had passed since the Constitution took effect and roughly six since the five-year deadline expired.
Salem questions why successive parliaments failed to issue the required law while advancing other legislation, including criminal-procedure legislation that did not face a comparable constitutional deadline.
He describes assignments outside judicial bodies as a “black hole” in the fabric of justice. Risks include compromised neutrality, conflicts of interest, erosion of the separation of powers and divided attention that can harm the administration of justice and litigants’ rights.
A central difficulty, he says, is reconciling the judge’s judicial obligations with the expectations and practices of the administrative body to which the judge is assigned. The boundary between judicial duty and administrative employment becomes blurred.
Salem argues that Articles 186 and 239 addressed these concerns, but successive parliaments’ failure to act prevented the intended restrictions on assignments to non-judicial organisations.
When a judge or judicial adviser works in an executive organisation, he says, expertise may be deployed under political or administrative pressure. This weakens professional safeguards, creates conflicts and can compromise confidence in judgments.
The external role may also bring financial and career advantages greater than those available within judicial institutions, creating unequal opportunities for advancement and undermining transparency in the allocation of state resources.
Justice depends on more than issuing judgments. It also depends on public confidence that rights are protected without political or administrative interference.
Salem calls on parliament to enact the secondment law urgently and review the mechanisms governing assignments, in line with constitutional requirements. He argues that protecting transparency, equality and the public interest is essential to administrative reform and a credible system of justice.
Will parliament require the responsible authorities to complete the law? Will the prime minister and communications minister face further questioning? And will the payments deemed improper by the State Council’s Fatwa and Legislation General Assembly be recovered? At the time this investigation was published, those questions remained unanswered.
