Wajir governor Mohamed Abdi Mohamud has been ordered to appear in court on Monday next week (February 10) to testify in Sh 26.1 million a graft case against three county senior officials and a bank manager.

Chief magistrate Teresia Murigi who is presiding the case issued the fresh summons to have the governor appear in court after failing to honour three previous summons.

The fresh summons to have Abdi appear in court comes after last month the DPP sought for warrant of arrest against him after he failed to turn up in court without giving reasons but the magistrate declined saying that no affidavit was tabled before the court to confirm that EACC Officer Commanding police station OCS served the Governor with same.

Abdi is expected to give his evidence after the Investigating officer in the case Steve Wanyama who led a team of investigators from EACC to Wajir county completed his evidence in-chief yesterday.

In his evidence, Wanyama informed the court that during their probe they found out that Sh 26.1 million was withdrawn from Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) Wajir branch by two of the accused persons namely Daud Abdullahi (economic planning executive), Jeff Mworia (acting county public service head) and was not taken to the county headquarters offices as required.

“This case is pegged on unprocedural withdrawal of money from the Wajir County government Imprest accounts as upon withdrawal of Sh 26. 1 million the same was misappropriated since it was not taken to the county offices,” said Wanyama.

He further added that from the information they received the money was withdrawn from KCB by the two officials on instruction of the governor who had a problem with his election petition case.

“That arising from the preliminary investigations we discovered that Sh 26.1 million was withdrawn from Wajir County Government County Imprest Account 1141515873 without any supporting document,” said the officer.

During cross-examination by defence lawyers led by Sam Nyaberi, the officer confirmed that the two took overdraft of Sh 25 million since the county account had only Sh 1.2 million.

He added that repayment of the loan was done by the county government seven days before the four accused persons in the case were charged in court in November 2018.

Wanyama told the court that according to calls data they received from Safaricom mobile providers shows that there was a high frequency communication between the Abdullahi, Mworia and Ahmed Sahal (county secretary) during and after the withdrawal of Sh 26 million from the Wajir KCB bank accounts.

He said that after the withdrawal of the cash on October 9,2018 from KCB Wajir branch,the former county secretary Abdullahi traveled to Nairobi following day after diving the money into halves, one which he delivered to the Governor at his resident along wood Vale Grove, Nairobi on October 11,2018 while the other half was delivered by Mworia on October 13, 2018 evening to the same governor.

Wanyama says that the two accused person the drew different cheques in Sh 5 million each cheque upon which they put together for purpose of delivering to the governor.

Further the court heard that before the withdrawal of the money Abdullahi wrote a letter on a Satudary to KCB claiming change of signatory to be single. Wanyama says that Mworia was appointed to be the single signatory of the imprest accounts of the county.

“According to my investigations l found that the county cabinet did not approve the CEC-Finance’s to make Jeff Mworia Kithinji a sole signatory,” said Wanyama.

The officer also informed the court that investigations into the case commenced following a complaint lodged at EACC offices by an employee of the county know as ‘anonymous’.

The four are alleged to have withdrawn the money from Kenya Commercial Bank, Wajir branch, on October 9,2018.

Abdullahi alone is facing a separate count of abuse of office and failure to manage public property.

It is said that between October 5 and October 9,2018 within Wajir County, Abdullahi used his office to confer a benefit of Sh26.1 million to Jeff Mworia by unlawfully authorising him as a sole signatory of the County Government of Wajir imprest account.

Sahal also faced a separate charge of abuse of office in which it was claimed that he used his position to confer a benefit to Mworia by purporting that County Executive Committee had appointed him the signatory of the imprest account.

Mworia faced four other counts, including fraudulent acquisition of public property.

Ibrahim got into trouble with the State for allegedly clearing cheques that did not bear the required signatures.

All the accused persons are out on a Sh2 million bond each with a surety of the same amount.