The widow of former Ugenya MP Steven Ondiek has challenged the anti-corruption court’s decision to jail her for two and a half years for stealing Sh1.5 million from taxpayers.
Concelia Aoko Ondiek says she is seriously ill and wants the High Court to free her from prison so that she can get medical treatment as she awaits a ruling on her appeal.
Justice James Wakiaga heard yesterday that Ms Ondiek, imprisoned in March this year by Chief Magistrate Lawrence Mugambi, needs treatment.
“The applicant is in dire need of medical attention as she is sick. We are requesting for leniency and it is an urgent matter,” her lawyer told the court.
But the court declined to hear the request because the file in the appeal case was not available. The hearing was moved to Monday next week.
Senior official
Ms Ondiek, who was a senior official at the Ministry of Education, was jailed after the magistrate found that she had pocketed Sh1.5 million meant for a workshop for school principals in Mombasa.
She was a secretary and acting director of secondary and tertiary education. The workshop was held at Coast Girls High School between June 13 and 29, 2009.
After the training, an audit showed that 30 officials had not properly accounted for the money spent. Some of the principals testified that they were paid Sh1,000 for lunch and transport while others received Sh1,600.
The court found her guilty of false accounting and said she had tried to pass the blame to her junior and co-accused, Christine Wegesa Chacha, but her attempts flopped because the signatures on the documents did not match.
Fine
Ms Chacha was ordered to pay a fine of Sh1 million or in default serve one year in jail.
The trial court also found that Ms Ondiek was a repeat offender for graft. It was the second time she was being convicted and sentenced for stealing public funds, forgery and false accounting.
Her first conviction was in 2016, when she was sentenced to six years in jail after being found guilty of false accounting by filing fake receipts at Jogoo House, Nairobi, in order to steal a total of Sh1.2 million.
Falsified receipts
In the first count she was found guilty of falsifying receipts for Sh1,067,500 intended for the purchase of stationery for a capacity-building workshop organised by the Ministry of Education.
In the second and third counts, she was said to have forged two receipts for Sh75,800 and Sh72,000, purporting to have received it from Sharrif Stationeries and General Suppliers for the purchase of assorted stationery. She committed the offences in 2009.
After she appealed, the High Court in March 2017 reduced the sentence to two and half years, with the option of paying a Sh600,000 fine.
Her co-accused in that case, Dorothy Ndia, a former secretary at the Education ministry, was fined Sh300,000 or in default serve 12 months in prison.
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