It has been a short-lived moment of freedom for the chairman of Kenya Water Towers Agency Rashid Echesa after the High Court at Milimani overturned his acquittal.
In December 2021, Echesa was cleared of the charges in the Sh39 billion fake arms deal.
Then, Senior Principal Magistrate Kenneth Cheruiyot said the prosecution had failed to prove its case against Echesa.
"The prosecution failed to call key witnesses... who would have shed light on how the arms deal was clinched. In the absence of such testimony against Echesa, I acquit him under Section 215 of the Criminal Procedure Code," he ruled then.
Aggrieved, the Prosecution moved to the High Court seeking to overturn the acquittal.
Delivering his judgment, Judge Kanyi Kimondo found that the trial magistrate erred by acquitting Echesa based on a lack of testimony from certain witnesses.
He ruled that the prosecution had presented a strong case against the former Cabinet Secretary for Sports and that the trial court should have found him with a case to answer and put him on defence rather than acquit him.
He directed Echesa to appear in person before the Milimani Chief Magistrate on March 4, for mention and directions on his defence hearing in the arms matter.
Echesa had been charged alongside Daniel Otieno, Clifford Okoth, Kennedy Oyoo and Chrispin Oduor Odipo with conspiring to commit a felony, making a document without authority, obtaining money by false pretence, attempting to commit a felony, and uttering a false document in the Sh39 billion fake arm scandal.
Businessman Oduor was found with a case to answer.
“I, however, place the fifth accused on his defence in the charge of being in possession of forged documents,” the magistrate ruled.
The five faced 12 counts of fraud-related charges.
Echesa had been accused of duping Eco Advanced Technologies that he would help them secure an arms tender at the Ministry of Defence, a deal in which he is accused of pocketing Sh11.5 million as consultancy fees.
The documents were allegedly used in a fake tender deal to supply the government with military surveillance equipment, guns, and ammunition.
The foreigners from the US and Poland-based company claimed that the ex-CS had allegedly promised to use his influence to help them secure the multi-billion-shilling security tender.
