Nairobi — The Anti-Corruption Court has declined an application to terminate a graft case against Kenya Revenue Authority Board Chairperson Anthony Mwaura and his spouse.

The application had been filed by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions before Chief Magistrate Eunice Nyuttu sitting at the Milimani Law Courts.

Mwaura was charged alongside former Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko and fifteen others in 2019 over the embezzlement of Sh357 million from the Nairobi City County.

Wednesday's verdict came a day after Nyuttu told off the Public Prosecutor for plunging the Anti-Corruption Court into unending adjournments in a graft case against former Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko.

Nyuttu expressed her frustrations on Tuesday over an emerging pattern by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Renson Ingonga to incessantly ask for adjournments via text messages and emails to court, dragging the Sh357 million case.

She noted the case against Sonko and sixteen others had stalled for four years, giving Ingonga's office the last chance to produce witnesses against the accused.

Nyuttu singled out two prosecutors assigned the case even as she accused the DPP's office of "tactifully absconding the case and employing a certain pattern of adjourning the case through text messages and sending emails to the court and the EACC lawyer".

She noted that the unacceptable trend was stonewalling justice with accused persons "returning home without having justice being done."

No evidence

Samuel Mwangi Ndung'u, a suspended employee of the Nairobi City County, tearfully recounted how her mother succumbed to an illness while he watched helpless because he could not support her financially.

"As I stand before you I am innocent so are my co-accused although we have been accused of pocketing Sh357 million which we didn't," Ndung'u told the court.

He insisted that he had no role in the alleged fraud.

"It's four years and the prosecutors have hard-rock hearts, they care less whether we get justice or not. They do not even attend court," Ndung'u lamented.

"I wish I had a share of the Sh357 million we are accused of defrauding the public. I would have assisted my late mother and supported my family which is wallowing in poverty," he went on saying.