The former Chief of staff in the Cook Islands, Edward Drollet, has been sentenced to two years in jail for receiving more than 16 thousand US dollars in Secret Commissions.
He was also given three months for the forgery of a back dated letter.
The letter authorised a contract between the office of the Prime Minister and a company that secretly paid him half of its accounting fees.
It was the first times that anyone had been charged under the Secret Commissions Act, passed in the late nineteen nineties.
The sentencing follows the exposure of the payments by the local media and investigations by the Cook Islands Audit Office and police, assisted by the New Zealand Fraud Office.
