The High Court has ordered a former Homa Bay County Government employee to repay Sh708,664 after finding that she received irregular salary payments over a period of more than three years.
Justice Benjamin Mwikya Musyoki entered judgment in favour of the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) against Evelyne Adhiambo Ogweno, who was found to have received additional payments to which she was not entitled between February 2015 and May 2018.
Ogweno had initially been appointed as a registered community health nurse before being employed by the county government as a nurse. Her basic salary at entry level was Sh19,323, subject to annual increments. The EACC told the court that Ogweno subsequently received double salary payments amounting to Sh708,664 through her Kenya Commercial Bank account during the period under investigation.
The anti-corruption agency relied, among other evidence, on bank records showing the payments and an email in which Ogweno undertook to repay the excess amount at a rate of Sh10,000 per month.
Justice Musyoki said the undertaking amounted to an acknowledgment that Ogweno had received excess payments, although the court noted that whether the payments resulted from fraud, deliberate action or an error was a separate question. “Whether the same was fraudulent, deliberate or an error is another issue all together,” the judge stated, adding that the payments were nevertheless irregular and recoverable.
The court, however, dismissed the EACC’s case against two other county employees who had been accused of facilitating or authorising the irregular payments. One of the officials worked in the payroll section and later acted as payroll manager, while the other served as payroll manager between June 2015 and December 2017. The EACC argued that the two should have detected and stopped the duplicate payments.
The court found that the evidence did not establish that either official had authorised, facilitated or negligently caused the payments. The judge also observed that the disputed payments began in February 2015, several months before the third defendant became payroll manager in June 2015.
