Corruption: Blow to accused in Anglo-Leasing case
Three former Permanent Secretaries and three businessmen facing charges over the Sh3.5 billion Anglo-Leasing scandal yesterday suffered a major blow in their bid to block the prosecution to introduce more witnesses.
The setback came after High Court judge John Onyiego allowed prosecution application to call four additional witnesses and documentary evidence in the case against former PSs Joseph Magari, Dave Mwangi and David Onyonka and businessmen Deepak and Rashmi Kamani together with their late father Rasmi Chamanlal.
“Prosecution application to call four additional witnesses and documentary evidence is allowed subject to such conditions that the trial court may attach regarding attendance of those witnesses and production of those documents in a timely manner without further judgement,” ruled the judge.
The judge, however, set aside orders of the trial magistrate Martha Mutuku made on September 10, 2019 disallowing DPP’s application to introduce four new witnesses in the case which has been pending in court for five years.
Mutuku had in her ruling disallowed the DPP from introducing new witnesses in case the, saying allowing prosecution to bring in new more witnesses after 45 witnesses have already testified will be prejudicial to the accused persons.
Further, the judge ordered Deputy Registrar to remit the original court file back to the trial court for proceedings to continue this morning (Thursday).
In his ruling Justice Onyiego said the additional evidence was not intended to fill in the gaps as none was specified nor is intended to ambush the defence considering that there was advance notice over disclosure.
The judge added that although the trial court was concerned and properly with maximum that justice delayed is justice denied, it misdirected itself by locking out witnesses who intended evidence was already in the hands of the defence and which would assist the court to make a just decision.
“In this case, the defence were supplied with additional documents and list of witnesses in advance although the notice was short”, added the judge.
Last September the DPP, through his Deputy Nicholas Mutuku, appealed against a decision by a magistrate’s court to deny him opportunity to introduce new evidence in the Anglo-Leasing case.
Mutuku argued that the decision would have adverse effects on all criminal cases and make it difficult to prove corruption cases.
