Sonko wants his Sh356m graft case terminated

Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko has blamed the Director of Public Prosecutions for delaying the commencement of his Sh356 million graft case.

The case had been listed for pre-trial on Tuesday but failed to kick off for the second time owing to lack of crucial documents and wrongly filed papers by the prosecution.

Defence lawyers led by Cecil Miller sought to have the proceedings terminated on grounds that the DPP was not ready to prosecute the case.

“Prosecution has not been ready for the last seven months and we cannot prepare a case based on incomplete documents. There can be no fair trial,” Miller said.

It’s been eight months since Sonko and 16 others were charged with corruption.

Miller and Prof Tom Ojienda said the delay in prosecuting the case had caused an injustice to the accused persons.  There was a bitter exchange between the DPP and defence counsels over the inventory and supply of documents.

Trial magistrate Douglas Ogoti in seeking to resolve the issues at hand sought to know whether the prosecution had filed the necessary documents and the inventory required for trial.

Prosecutor James Kihara informed the court that the documents had indeed been filed but he wanted the proceedings suspended to allow them canvass another application.

Ogoti declined and subsequently ordered the pre-trial to commence.

“Parties were given ample time to prepare for pre-trial. It’s been eight months since the plea was taken.  The purpose of a pre-trial is to ensure before a case is fixed for main hearing the threshold is met,” he said.

The court subsequently asked the prosecution to adduce the documents they intended to rely on during trial. But the court later realised the documents were not in order.

“A look at the documents shows that the inventory was wrongly paginated. The prosecution will now go back to the drawing board and number the documents page by page to avoid confusion during trial,” he said.

Ogoti directed parties to exchange a formal inventory through a common email to be created by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC). He gave them four weeks to comply with the directive. He said the DPP and EACC should ensure the documents were properly indexed.

The matter proceeded from 10am to 4pm. Ogoti set the pre-trial for August 26.

On December 9 last year, DPP instituted criminal proceedings against Sonko and 16 others. They all pleaded not guilty.

Sonko faces economic crimes, abuse of office, unlawful acquisition of property and irregular payments that saw the county lose Sh356 million. He was released on a cash bail of Sh15 million and barred from accessing his office.

Edited by Henry Makori