The fight against public sector graft scored a major victory on Friday after the Malindi National Government Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF) account manager and a private contractor were slapped with heavy fines and multi-year jail sentences over a Sh19 million fraud scheme.

Chief Magistrate John N. Muniu brought the long-running corruption case to a close, convicting fund manager Wachu Omar Abdallah and Robert Katana Wanje, a director of Multserve Contractors Limited, for conspiring to systematically defraud the public kitty.

The convictions follow a rigorous trial during which the prosecution paraded more than ten witnesses to meticulously dismantle a corrupt public works tender.

The legal battle centered on a May 2018 contract awarded to Multserve Contractors Limited for the construction of the Malindi Sub-County Education Office Block, a project worth Sh19,007,539.60.

In his final ruling, Magistrate Muniu completely dismissed the defendants’ testimonies as shaky and unconvincing, stating that the state’s evidence comfortably cleared the strict evidentiary thresholds mandated by the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act.

The court exposed distinct layers of criminal conduct executed by both the public officer and the private developer.

Abdallah was convicted of willful failure to comply with procurement laws after he bypassed mandatory statutory protocols to hastily award the multi-million shilling tender to Multserve within a tight four-day window without first obtaining a vital professional opinion.

For this abuse of office, the court slapped the fund manager with a Sh400,000 fine, carrying a harsh alternative sentence of six years in prison should he default.

Concurrently, the court unmasked Wanje as the fraudulent architect behind the corporate bid.

The contractor was convicted on three counts of forgery and one count of uttering a false document after it was discovered he had fabricated a curriculum vitae, a technical craft certificate, and entirely fictitious audited financial statements to inflate his firm’s qualifications.

Wanje then deliberately fed these forged documents to the Tender Opening Committee to hijack the public contract.

The magistrate penalized the director with a Sh200,000 fine or a two-year prison term for each of the four separate counts, directing that the custodial sentences run concurrently.