Kenya Power yet to locate files in bogus transformers case
A Kenya Power worker fixes a transformer in Nyeri. Some of the company's officials approved the purchase of faulty transformers. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
- The documents were discovered missing after the DCI wrote to the management to surrender them during investigations into the tender awarded to Muwa Trading Company.
- Mr Mbaabu said officers in the corporate and supply chain divisions had said that in a bid to make the office neat, documents were transferred from spring files to box files.
Kenya Power is yet to recover three missing tender documents in the procurement of defective transformers valued at over Sh4.5 billion, a Milimani court in Nairobi was told on Thursday.
The Energy Regulatory Commission lists the documents — a tender evaluation report, a budget approval and a negotiation report — as the basic evidence in the graft case alleging abuse of office against 11 of the parastatal's top managers involved in the procurement of the equipment.
A forensic audit general manager, Mr John Mbaabu, told Senior Principal Magistrate Kennedy Cheruiyot that the documents disappeared mysteriously from the firm's offices four months ago and are yet to be found.
On cross-examination by defence lawyers Migos Ogamba and Assa Nyakundi, Mr Mbaabu said: “They could be somewhere in the KP offices.”
CHARGED
Mr Mbaabu, who was testifying in a case in which the company's former legal secretary, Ms Beatrice Meso, and two procurement managers were charged with conspiracy to defeat justice, absolved them from blame, saying the documents were kept by their juniors.
Ms Meso is charged alongside former supply chain general manager John Ombui and former procurement manager Ruth Oyile.
They are accused of conducting their duties irregularly, leading to the loss of the original tender documents, knowing well that they would be relied upon for criminal investigations and prosecutions.
The documents were discovered missing after the DCI's Serious Crimes Unit (SCU) wrote to the Kenya Power management to surrender them during investigations into the tender awarded to Muwa Trading Company.
The company's owners have been charged alongside the Kenya Power bosses.
CLEAN-UP
Mr Mbaabu said officers in the corporate and supply chain divisions had said that, in a bid to make the office neat, documents were transferred from spring files to box files, and that the task was given to interns, so the documents could have gone missing during this exercise.
The documents were in the tender file handed over to the SCU, but not in the one shared by Kenya Power.
He said most of the documents in the file shared with the SCU were traced through Ms Oyile's efforts, and that he was surprised to see her in court.
"Ruth went out of her way and at one point worked over the weekend, updating me on the progress of the search for the documents. Most of the documents we shared with the DCI were recovered through her efforts," Mr Mbaabu said.
