Project manager jailed two years in forgery case

The Blantyre Chief Resident Magistrate Court has convicted and sentenced a 33-year-old man to two years imprisonment with hard labour for Forgery and another two years for Theft by Servant respectively.

The accused, Alinafe Jacob Mwanza of Chibvunguma village traditional authority (TA) Chulu in Kasungu who was project manager for Performance Based Financing Malawi project under College of Medicine(COM), committed the offences between December 2015 and June 2016.

According to Geoffrey Chisoni, Project Accountant, the accused used to forge signatures on payment vouchers supposedly as if it was Adamson Sinjani Muula-Principle Investigator at the Performance Based Financing Malawi project.

Through the forged signatures money amounting to over MK21,433,553.06 was stolen during the period in question.

Matter was reported to Police after it was discovered that there was something wrong with the project finances.

Accused was arrested and charged with Forgery and Theft by Servant.

Appearing before the Blantyre Chief Resident Magistrate Court, the accused pleaded guilty to both charges.

The court found him guilty and convicted him on both counts.

In his submissions before the court on Wednesday April 11, 2018, Police prosecutor Sub – Inspector Justice Manolo of Blantyre Police pleaded with the court to pass a stiffer punishment to the accused saying his conduct led to loss of huge sums of money and that there was no recovery of the stolen money.

Passing the sentence, First Grade Magistrate Dianna Mangwana said the court had taken into consideration the fact that the accused was a first offender and that he pleaded guilty to the charges.

She therefore sentenced Alinafe Jacob Mwanza to 24 months imprisonment with hard labour for the first count of Forgery and 24 months imprisonment with hard labour for the second count of Theft by Servant.

Both sentences to run concurrently.

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