Court declines to set aside former Kemri boss Davy Koech’s graft conviction

A corruption conviction against a former managing director of the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri) remains in place after the High Court yesterday declined to quash it.

Prof Davy Koech had wanted the court to review Magistrate Victor Wakumile’s decision rendered in September 2021, which found him guilty of corruptly acquiring Sh19.3 million public funds and sentenced him to a six-year jail term.

Describing the decision as faulty, he sought an order quashing the conviction and the subsequent sentence imposed by the lower court.

However, Justice Esther Maina dismissed the request, saying Prof Koech had failed to demonstrate how the trial court erred in convicting him for the corruption offence.

"I have considered the application and the submissions by Prof Koech and the prosecution, and my finding is that the application has no merit," Justice Maina said.

The judge threw out the application for two reasons. First, Prof Koech did not demonstrate irregularities in the trial court’s judgment to warrant her quashing the conviction and sentence.

She explained that a review application is used to consider the correctness, legality, propriety of any finding or sentence, and the irregularity of the lower court, none of which the former Kemri boss had demonstrated.

Secondly, the judge said she did not find that the trial court’s decision could be voided because of an arranged agreement between the State and Prof Koech.

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She noted that Prof Koech wanted the court to quash the conviction because the State had undertaken not to prosecute him if he paid the sums in question.

“The lower court had directed that there should be undertaking in writing as per Section 56(b) of the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act. When l went through the record l did not find such undertaking to warrant this court to declare the proceedings in the trial court were null and void,” said Justice Maina.

She noted that there is a pending appeal related to the judgment.

Prof Koech was found guilty of three counts related to fraudulent acquisition of public property and was fined Sh19.6 million or alternatively serve six years in jail.

The charge sheet stated that on August 17, 2006, in Nairobi, he fraudulently acquired Sh800,000 the property of Kemri.

The second and third charges read that on December 12, 2006, he irregularly acquired Sh6 million and another Sh12.5 million from the research institution.

He faced alternative counts which indicated that he used his office to corruptly confer to himself monies held in the account of Vector Biological and Control Research.

He was accused of transferring Sh19.3 million from the institution’s bank accounts to his personal accounts when he was the managing director. The funds had been allocated to the Centre for Disease Control, Kisumu.

The trial magistrate noted that Prof Koech had returned, with interest, the institution’s research money that he had acquired corruptly and, therefore, no loss was suffered.