BY NT CORRESPONDENT.
Former Ministry of education cashier has been jailed by a Nairobi court for one year or pay a fine of Sh 600,000.
This is after Trial magistrate Felix Kombo found Perminus Kamau Njoroge guilty of stealing Sh 12 980,000 from the Ministry of Higher Education after the prosecution prove the graft charges against him beyond reasonable doubt.
“I find that Count one which is the main Count is proved beyond all reasonable doubt against the Accused. I make no finding in relation to the alternative count which remains in abeyance,” ruled Kombo.
The court said it was not clear how the money was shared between the accused and others.
In his Judgment Kombo found that the accused received the total sum of Sh 15,480,000 million in cash at his office. According to exhibits the amount unaccounted for is Sh 12,980,000 which is also the amount in the charge sheet.
“There was concurrence in the two audit reports that the actual loss was shilling 11,139,270 million. It is my view that this actual loss is the amount that should have been in the charge sheet,” said magistrate.
Prosecution had informed the court that Kamau being a person employed in the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology as a cashier, stole Sh 12,980,000 the property of the Government, which came into his possession by virtue of his employment.
Kamau in his defence claimed that he was not found with the money during his arrest.
The Court noted that Kamau defence portrayed himself as an overworked and understaffed officer, and the victim of confusion and lack of procedures and guidelines that he alleges came with the split of his former Ministry of Education.
Further it was the accused evidence that he was a qualified accountant holding a CPA at the time of employment and having worked elsewhere for seven years before joining the Ministry of Education.
“He is not a person who did not understand Government financial regulations or the requirements of his job. Again all the foregoing had nothing to do with the unprocedural manner in which he handled the Cash Book,” noted magistrate.
In his defence, Kamau denied that he had absconded duty indicating that he had been unwell.
At the same time the court said that he did not produced any material in support of that contention, nor did he confront the PS when he testified that the accused had been on an unauthorized leave of absence, and did not return until the PS had left the Ministry.
Kombo also said that the accused person did not do the same for Kepha Mareri- the Chief Accountant who he directly worked with, or even his most immediate supervisor Ms Catherine Ngugi.
He claim that he was forced by his seniors to make the entries of 27/6/2008 and 30/6/2008 and the adjustments of 30/6/2008 in Folios 54 and 56 of the Cash Book the allegations that magistrate found has no basis.
The trial magistrate said investigation does not seem to have taken this direction, which perhaps it should have, but was satisfied that the material before the Court suffices for the finding made.
He said there was suggestion in the evidence that the withdrawals were themselves orchestrated clandestinely and fraudulently, and that the Accused was a cog in the scheme.
This could be explained by the scantiness and apparent evasiveness in the testimony of his boss Kepha Oseko Mareri was the Ministry’s Chief Accountant and the fact that documentation that must have been generated to facilitate the withdrawals from CBK, and which a prosecution witness Catherine Ngugi referred to, was not availed to the Auditors.
“It is probably for this reason that the actual purpose for the hurriedly withdrawn
proceeds has remained a mystery. It also smacks of an illegality that unsanctioned authorization of transfer of funds from the Ministry recurrent account to a purported ‘development’ project,” noted Kombo.
The trial court further said documentation relating to the authorization were clearly kept away from the auditors in the end.
The convict was then Chief Cashier at the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology which was then a young Ministry hived off in 2008 from the then larger Ministry of Education.
“From the evidence he was also involved in the process of requisition of office ‘float’ from the Central Bank of Kenya,” said the trial magistrate.
It is said that investigations and the accused arrest was triggered by a Audit report that showed that there was some misappropriation of funds at the Ministry.
