A former driver at the Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company has been ordered to pay back more than Sh6.7 million he earned over seven years after a court found he landed the job with a forged secondary school certificate.

Milimani Anti-Corruption Court Senior Principal Magistrate Celesa Okore on Thursday convicted Kelly Gichuri Muiruri on four counts and ordered him to refund Sh6,742,673 in salaries paid to him between November 2016 and December 2023, on top of fines totalling Sh800,000. Together, the penalties come to about Sh7.54 million.

C plain on paper, D plain in reality

The court heard that Mr Muiruri presented a Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) certificate showing he scored a mean grade of C plain in the 2002 examination, when he had actually obtained a D plain. The case was investigated by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) after it received a report, and the file was forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who approved the charges.

He was found guilty of fraudulent acquisition of public property, uttering a false document, deceiving a principal and presenting a forged certificate. He was acquitted of the separate charge of forging the academic document itself.

The sentence

According to The Standard, the penalties are:

  • Refund of Sh6,742,673, or four years in prison in default
  • Sh300,000 for fraudulent acquisition of public property, or 12 months in default
  • Sh200,000 for uttering a false document, or eight months in default
  • Sh200,000 for deceiving a principal, or eight months in default
  • Sh100,000 for presenting a forged certificate, or eight months in default

The court ordered that the default jail terms for the fines run consecutively, meaning failure to pay could keep him behind bars for years.

Part of a wider crackdown

The EACC said the court had convicted the employee "for using a forged academic certificate to secure employment". The commission has in recent years pursued a string of public servants accused of using fake papers to get jobs or promotions, and seeks to recover the salaries they earned.

Mr Muiruri is not the first Nairobi Water employee to be convicted in such a case. In 2025, another staff member of the utility was fined a total of Sh8.5 million over a forged certificate, while a former accountant at the Nuclear Power and Energy Agency was fined Sh130,000 for using falsified KCSE documents.

The cases have renewed calls for public bodies to verify the academic and professional papers of their employees, with the EACC warning that those who obtain jobs fraudulently will be made to pay back what they earned.

Photos: Court Helicopter; Kenyans.co.ke. Thumbnail design: HAMASTA MEDIA.