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Mumma loses bid to set aside ruling

Thursday, June 8th, 2023 08:40 | By
Nominated Senator Catherine Mumma at a past function. PHOTO/Courtesy

The Senate Devolution Committee Chairperson Catherine Mumma has lost her bid to set aside a Magistrate’s Court’s decision to lock out her defence statements in a case in which the anti-corruption seeks to recover close to Sh1 million from her.

She wanted the High Court Commercial Division to reverse the ruling dated May 15, 2014 in which the Chief Magistrate Lucy Gicheha declined her prayer to have her witnesses’ statements admitted as evidence in the case that involves Sh903,000 she illegally acquired.

The anti-corruption agency sued Mumma in 2005 seeking to recover the amount saying that she was allegedly overpaid as allowances in a taskforce which was appointed to look into the HIV-AIDS pandemic in Kenya in 2001.

 The commission petitioned the court after National Aids Control Council sought to have the Senator refund more than Sh500,000 she is alleged to have received when she served as joint Secretary of the task force.

It is said that she was paid Sh903,000 in allowances while she was only entitled to Sh357,000.

After the commencement of the recovery case by the commission in 2005, the Chief Magistrate’s court granted Mumma time to file her witness statement but she failed to do so for a period of five years.

She later sought to have her late defence statement admitted in court.

But Gicheha on September 15,2020 declined her request.

Dissatisfied with the decision, Mumma lodged an appeal before the High Court where she argued that the magistrate subjected her to injustice and subverted her tight to a fair hearing.

But Justice Asenath Ongeri dismissed the appeal saying there was inordinate delay by Mumma in seeking to review.

The judge directed the file be sent back to the trial court so that the recovery suit proceeds to it’s  conclusion.

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