Nairobi — The Anglo-Leasing corruption case may have been premature when it was filed, an anti-corruption court was told this week.
The Investigating Officer Ignatius Wekesa this week shocked the court when he told chief magistrate Felix Kombo that at the time the charges in the case were preferred, details on the existence and registration of a company at the centre of the mega scandal, Sound Day were not available.
“At the time the case was filed, we did not know the directors and neither were we aware that Sound Day had had previous engagements with the government of Kenya since 1989 and had been supplying security apparatus,” Wekesa told court.
He told the court that investigators were still trying to ascertain details of the company registration when the case was filed and charges preferred against five accused persons facing charges of conspiracy to defraud the state. But evidence produced in court show that the Cabinet had approved the security project.
Those facing charges are Dave Mwangi, Joseph Magari, Joseph Onyonka and two businessmen Deepak and Rashmi Kamani.
He made the revelation during cross-examination by Senior Counsel Ahmednassir Abdullahi.
Documents presented in court show that Sound Day was a registered company that was incorporated in the British Virgin Islands in September 21, 1989.
In his testimony on Wednesday, the witness agrees that in light of the documents ascertaining the existence of the company, the charges “were no longer tenable”.
When asked if his initial observation was erroneous, he said he may have made a “semantic error”.
And he told the court that he was equally surprised that there was no single prosecution witness had testified so far on any wrongdoing in the contract.
During the trial, the witness was shown the evidence of several witnesses among them former Attorney General Amos Wako and his legal team who gave the contract a clean bill of health.
Similar evidence by former Treasury and Office of the President officials are consistent with that of the AG.
According to the lawyer, the evidence presented by all the officials show that the contract was valid.
A statement was also produced in court from the police department by Levin Mwandi confirming the receipt of goods from Sound Day.
Also produced in court was evidence from John Berich of the Central Bank, which confirmed the validity of the contract.
“The evidence from the prosecution witnesses states that all were valid contracts according to the law,” Abdullahi said.