The Anti-Corruption Court has exonerated former Governor Mike Sonko of all charges of graft related to the loss of funds associated with a revenue tender at City Hall over three years ago.
As a result, Sonko is now free to live his life as he pleases after the court's decision.
In the Ksh 20 million graft case, the chief magistrate of the Milimani Anti-corruption Court, Douglas Ogoti, ordered Sonko and his co-accused businessman, Antony Ombok Jamal, to be freed for false accusation.
Ogoti referred to the charges as defective and stated that there was a lack of proof.
"I have come to the conclusion that the prosecution has not proven its case beyond a shadow of a doubt."
According to Ogoti, "Section 210 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) renders the whole prosecution's case against all of the accused people ineffective, and as a result, they have all been acquitted."
The magistrate, while acquitting Sonko and Jamal of the charges, stated that the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution ceased to submit evidence trying to identify the companies that were said to have been paid monies, which rendered all 13 of the graft charges filed by the prosecution against Sonko and Jamal invalid.
The magistrate then proceeded to acquit Sonko and Jamal of the charges.
Ogoti added that there was no theft of money from Nairobi County because there was no substantiation presented as evidence regarding the loss of funds from the county government.
He stated that this was because there was no theft of money.
In addition, the court dismissed the plaintiff's accusations that the previous governor had unlawfully allowed payment for the contract.
In this particular instance, Sonko was accused along with ROG Security Limited and Jamal of conspiring to conduct an act of graft known as abuse of power by embezzling ten million shillings from the Nairobi county government in January 2019 in order to enable payments to Web Tribe Limited.
The besieged former governor of Nairobi was charged with another count of conflict of interest where he intentionally obtained an oblique private interest in a contract with a public body.
The contract in question was one for the supply, deployment, and maintenance of electronic revenue collection and payments that was granted by Nairobi County to Web Tribe.
The former governor is accused of obtaining Ksh 10 million from the company through ROG Security Limited.
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