The High Court has partially withheld appeals by former cabinet Ministers Basil Mramba (75) and Daniel Yona (76), reducing three-year imprisonment term to two years and overturning the Sh5m fine sentence ruled by the Kisutu Magistrate Court earlier in July.
But Judge Projest Rugazia also dismissed the prosecution’s appeal against the lower court’s ruling that acquitted former Finance Ministry Permanent Secretary Gray Mgonja after finding him not guilty of abusing his office.
Though Mramba and Yona had appealed to be cleared of all charges, Judge Rugazia reduced the jail term and abolished the fine, citing minor discrepancies in the proceedings and an apparent ruling in the lower court.
On July 4 this year former Finance Minister Basil Mramba and his Energy and Mineral counterpart Daniel Yona were sentenced to serve three years in jail with 5 million fines for abuse of office-related charges.
Mramba was found guilty of 11 charges including misuse of office, causing a loss of Sh11.7bn to the government through the controversial hiring and tax exemptions to Alex Stewart (Asseyars) Government Business Corporation (ASA) for a gold audit.
Yona was guilty of five out of the 11 counts
On the same day the duo appealed to the High Court, seeking, among others, consideration for bail pending their appeal.
In their appeal statement, they alleged that the charges against them were not correct, the proceedings were improperly handled, the evidence was not strong enough to convict them, and that the punishment was not concurrent with the alleged crimes.
The court, however, denied some of the claims in their appeal saying that both Yona and Mramba were directly involved in committing the offences.
Judge Rugazia said there was no ground to prove that the absence of some witnesses as alleged by the appellants hampered the course of justice in the absence of a law which provide specific number of witnesses to appear in a case.
“I fail to understand the man who allegedly caused loss of billions is given the option of such a small fine. I do not know why but I leave this to the lawmakers,” he said in response to claims that the penalty was too harsh to match with the alleged offences, in what appeared to be a paradox to the penalty of fine he has overturned.
However, the court rejected the appeal by the government over Mgonja who was acquitted of similar charges as the prosecution failed to prove him guilty.
The two Ministers served under retired President Benjamin Mkapa and were found guilty of occasioning the government an 11,752,350,148/- loss through unwarranted tax exemptions to the gold assayers firm, Alex Stewart Government Business Corporation.
In 2003, Alex Stewart (Assayers) was controversially assigned to a contract which saw it receive a whopping Sh65bn/- (USD 50 million) in gold audit fees.
It completed the assignment and left the country in August 2007 after having fetched monthly average of Sh1.3bn (USD1 million) from June 2003 to August 2007.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
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