Former Nation employee sentenced to 16 years imprisonment over Sh10 million theft

A former Nation Media Group (NMG) employee has been sentenced to 16 years imprisonment after the court found him guilty of stealing Sh10,205,027 from his employer.

Davis Kaunda Osoro, who until October 2012 worked with Nation Media Group Kisumu in the Commercial Department Kisumu , was charged with six counts of stealing contrary to section 281 of the penal code.

According to the charges leveled against him, Osoro on indicated dates between the 1st February 2011 and 31st December 2011 jointly with others who were not before the court stole the said sum of money from Nation Media Group

The accused, however, denied the charges that had been leveled against him.

Mr.Osoro was also charged with fraudulent accounting where he falsified cash sale books serial number with intent to defraud the company he was working for.

He was further accused of stealing cash of Sh5,459,423 between 1st January 2012 and 30 September 2012, a fete he achieved in collusion with others who were not before the court.

It is was alleged that the complainant (NMG) received revenue from clients wishing to advertise with their daily newspaper. While some clients have the credit facility, others pay upfront.

At the time, according to the court records, the clients who wished to make cash payments for adverts would be given a proforma invoice to fill. After the payment they were issued with a manual receipt which was scanned and emailed to the NMG head office, thus clearing the advert for publishing.

Osoro's responsibility was to scan the receipts and send it to Nairobi, and that is when, at some time in 2012, Doreen Akoth Ogolo, who testified as a prosecution witness, discovered that two receipts for Municipal Council of Kisumu were used twice.

Ogolo was the revenue accountant at Nation Centre in Nairobi, whose responsibility was to ensure that the revenue from advertising is accounted for.

The two receipts which Ogolo noticed were not in the summary of the monthly returns. This prompted Ogolo to enquire from Osoro through an email. Osoro, in his response to Ogolo's email, promised to explain the abnormality.
Ogolo consequently forwarded the matter to John Wanjohi, the Chief Accountant who was her overall boss.

At the same time, in the month of October 2012, another accountant Alfred Kiilu who was charged with the responsibility of bank reconciliation detected some anomalies for the month of September 2012 from Davis Osoro where there were cash sale receipts not included in the monthly returns.

That became an indication that the money for the adverts was collected and not banked. On digging deeper, Kiilu discovered that there were certain receipts recorded and the accused had not sent them to NMG headquarters.

The matter thus reached the security desk, and a team was dispatched to Kisumu Bureau to establish what had gone wrong.Mr. Osoro could not account for receipt books which he had been given.It was clear that some books were missing.

Investigations revealed that Osoro could not account for Sh15,664,450.51 going by the cash sale receipts which were used but not accounted for in the report.

In his judgment on 31 January 2017, Senior Principal Magistrate (SPM) Julius Ngarngar found that the exhibits provided before the court proved beyond reasonable doubts that the accused received Sh10,205,027 by virtue of his employment and did not bank it and he did not account for it.

Consequently, the Magistrate found Osoro guilty of the six out of eight counts of stealing by the servant and thus handed him a cumulative 16 years in prison.