Nairobi — A Magistrate Court sitting at the Milimani Law Court has acquitted the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) Board Chairperson Anthony Mwaura in a Sh357 million corruption case for lack of evidence.
Mwaura was acquitted on Wednesday alongside former Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko and 16 other persons a day after the High Court declined to reopen the case.
Magistrate Eunice Nyuttu said the Public Prosecutor had failed to prove fraud alleged at the City Hall under Sonko's reign.
The High Court, while declining a bid by the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) to set aside a November 2, 2023, ruling that ordered the closure of the case lashed out at the Public Prosecutor for derailing the court.
Justice Nixon Sifuna instead referred the DPP to the trial magistrate court where he said the matter would proceed as directed.
"As I have always stated, the court is a master of its proceedings and only it has the task of controlling and managing its proceedings," Justice Sifuna ruled.
"The task of the litigants is to present their case and not to control and manage the court or the judicial officer presiding over their case."
Unending adjournments
In its decision in November 2023, the Magistrate Court had told off the Public Prosecutor for plunging the Anti-Corruption Court into unending adjournments in a graft case.
Nyuttu expressed her frustrations 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".
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