City Hall’s Sh200m payout blocked

The anti-corruption watchdog has stopped “irregular” payments at City Hall worth Sh200 million to various companies including one closely linked to an assistant minister.

Acting Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission head of investigations and asset tracing Peter Mwangi said the action, taken over the last two weeks, was to pave the way for investigations into suspected fraudulent transactions.

“Investigations are underway and are still at the early stages,” Mr Mwangi said in an interview on the sidelines of the integrity testing programme workshop in Nairobi.

Questioned payments

One of the deals involved the payment of Sh155 million to private company as charges for garbage collection.

The council had agreed to give to the company Sh70 million as down payment, which the anti-graft commission has now stopped pending investigations.

This arose after the council’s director of internal audit department, Mrs Esther Ndegwa, questioned the intended payments.

The commission is also investigating the alleged purchase of a piece of land in Lang’ata, which the council in a September 8 memo by the acting director of legal Affairs, Mr A.J. Owuor, committed itself to paying an initial Sh60 million.

The Nation established that the council was yet to pay Sh220 million for the land whose purchase deal was allegedly entered into 10 years ago.

The civic authority wants to pay the amount yet the then town Clerk, Mr John Ong’ele, had said the council never passed any resolution for the purchase of the said property and that any transaction entered into it was null and void, the Nation established.

According to documents seen by Nation, Mr Ong’ele had questioned the transaction, saying the sale agreement was suspicious as it had no date and that “the signatures of the Town Clerk and Director were not witnessed”.

Multi-media contact centre

The Commission has also stopped the payment of Sh63 million to a company for the establishment of multi-media contact centre at City Hall.

The commission’s detectives have already moved to City Hall to investigate claims that the council might have exaggerated its budget by millions of cash in setting up the centre.

Several senior council officials have been interrogated over the project.

The anti-graft agency is also said to have written to Town Clerk Philip Kisia requesting his office to furnish them with further details over the project. The contract to put up the centre was awarded to Sido General Contractors on March 10, 2011, at a cost of Sh63 million.

The signing of the actual contract was done on May 17, this year.