Lamin George, senior magistrate at the Banjul Magistrates Court, last Friday, 23rd January, convicted and sentenced Oley Sey, a former nominated member of the National Assembly, and Abdourahman Bah, coordinator of the James Junkung Jammeh Memorial Nursery School in Abuko, to 6 months mandatory imprisonment.  

The senior magistrate also fined the two D25,000 each and ordered them to pay a compensatory D100,000.  In addition to that, the magistrate ordered that the D300,000 recovered from the two accused persons be returned to the James Junkung Jammeh Memorial Nursery School in Abuko with immediate effect.

The presiding magistrate, handing down his judgement, recalled that the two accused persons were brought before on charges of conspiring to commit felony and stealing the D500,000 donated by His Excellency President Yahya Jammeh to the James Junkung Jammeh Memorial Nursery School in Abuko.

The magistrate made references to the fact that it was revealed by different witnesses that the money was indeed handed over to the second accused, Bah. The widely publicised trial had involved testimonies from high profile figures such as the mayor of KMC, Yankuba Colley. The prosecution had called in four witnesses, while the first accused produced none. Bah had called in just one witness.

The prosecution witnesses had all maintained that the accused persons failed to honour the obligations given to them to bank the money. The second accused had claimed to have handed over parts of the money (D400,000) to Oley Sey - who repeatedly insisted that he had only given her D200,000 which she produced at the NIA offices. The magistrate, in his judgement, said: “From the evidence stated, I found the evidence of the two accused manifestly unreliable”.