Bid to audit embassy deal secretly ‘failed’

A senior diplomat on Monday disclosed how a secret trip to Tokyo to assess the purchase of embassy land backfired after staff got wind of it.

Mr James Kihwaga testified that the secret trip to Japan was hatched by the director of administration at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr Joseph Ndathi (currently the Kirinyaga governor), who dispatched him to find out more about the agreement with the plot owner.

The witness, who is the counsellor at the Kenyan mission in Geneva, Switzerland, said that despite not involving permanent secretary Thuita Mwangi, he obeyed Mr Ndathi’s orders.

The PS was the one authorised to sanction the trip.

“The PS was not involved in the secret trip, as should have been, but I feared for my own safety. That is why I obliged and went to Japan secretly as ordered by Mr Ndathi,” Mr Kihwaga said.

According to Mr Kihwaga, who at the time was the head of the legal division at the ministry, he was under instructions not to inform any embassy official about his visit or get in touch with them while in Japan.

INFORMED PS

The scheme, however, backfired when the chargé d’affaires, Mr Allan Mburu, arranged for an embassy vehicle to pick him up at the airport and hosted him at the ambassador’s residence.

“Mr Mburu insisted on my presence being public, and informed the PS that I was in Japan, after which they accommodated me. This was contrary to the wishes of the people who wanted my trip to be secret,” he said.

Asked if he achieved the objective of the secret visit, Mr Kihwaga said he was not sure and that he did not even know the objective of sending him to Japan.

The diplomat was testifying in a case in which the former PS, Mr Mburu and former ambassador to Libya Anthony Muchiri have denied abuse-of-office claims in procuring the Sh1.1 billion Kenya embassy and the ambassador’s residence in Tokyo.