A former employee of a state-affiliated power generation company has been sentenced after being found guilty of using fraudulent Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) and disability documents to obtain employment and financial benefits. According to a statement obtained by Kenyans.co.ke, he was convicted by the Anti-Corruption Court following a prosecution led by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP).“The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has today secured an 11-year prison sentence against a former employee who used a forged academic certificate to secure employment and unlawfully obtained more than Ksh14.9 million in salaries and benefits,” the statement read.The court found that he presented a fake KCSE certificate showing a different grade than he had actually attained when applying for a job at the company.The certificate he submitted indicated that he had scored a C-, which enabled him to secure a position as a Craft Grade III employee. Records presented in court showed that he attained a mean grade of D- from eight subjects when he sat his KCSE in 1994 at St Paul’s Igonga Secondary School. He worked for the power generation company from August 2003 until September 2018, when he resigned after being asked to produce his original academic certificates. During that period, he was found to have received salaries and other employment benefits totalling Ksh14.946 million as a result of the fraudulent qualification. The court also established that he obtained a disability certificate fraudulently from the National Council for Persons with Disabilities. The certificate allowed him to benefit from tax exemptions between July 2014 and September 2018. Senior Principal Magistrate Celesa Okore ordered the former employee to pay the Ksh14.946 million as compensation for the public funds he obtained through the fraud, or serve five years in prison if he fails to pay. He was additionally fined Ksh900,000 for fraudulently acquiring public property, with a two-year custodial sentence as an alternative, and received separate Ksh200,000 fines for each of two counts involving false documents. Cases involving forged documents presented by employees in government offices and state agencies have increasingly come under scrutiny by enforcement agencies. Two weeks ago, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) charged a former Machakos County chief officer over allegations that he used a fake academic certificate to obtain employment.
This page contains an attributed headline and the preview text supplied through the publisher’s RSS feed. Copyright in the original reporting belongs to Kenyans.co.ke.
