REGINA vs. JAGNE AND N'JIE.

The first accused, Abdoulie Amadou Jagne, a government accounting officer and public servant stationed at Georgetown in the MacCarthy Island Division, was charged with stealing a gross sum representing a cash deficiency in public funds while employed in the public service. The second accused, Ebrima N'Jie, who lived in Jagne’s house and worked for him as a farmer, was charged on the first count with aiding and abetting Jagne in that theft and on a second count with theft of a smaller sum. The prosecution case was that Jagne had over time misappropriated public money and, with N'Jie’s assistance, staged an apparent office theft on 1 May 1956 to explain the deficiency. The court found from the accounting evidence, the irregular maintenance of cash balances, unexplained withdrawals and collections of cash, and the fabricated circumstances of the supposed office theft, that Jagne had already stolen the money before 1 May 1956 and that N'Jie only participated in the later cover-up and personally stole £2 19s. 6d. himself. Portion of judgment: “The case for the prosecution is that this sum had been stolen by Jagne on various dates between January 18 and May 1, 1956… It is further alleged that the two accused ‘staged’ an office breaking on the morning of May 1 for the purpose of covering up this theft.”