MPs to question Mucheru, Rotich over media debt

Two Cabinet secretaries are to appear before the National Assembly to explain failure by the government to pay over Sh2.5 billion owed to media in advertisement revenue.

Mr Joe Mucheru (ICT) and Mr Henry Rotich (Treasury) had been summoned by the ICT Committee to appear on Tuesday but this was pushed back to allow detectives who have been investigating the matter to complete their work.

Marakwet West MP William Kisang, who chairs the National Assembly Committee on Communication, Information and Innovation, on Friday told Nation that the two ministers will appear before the Committee once the probe at the ICT Ministry by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) officers is done.

“We had already done letters for them to appear next week. But when I spoke to the CS (Mucheru) yesterday, he told me that DCI officers are already at the Ministry investigating the matter,” Mr Kisang’ said. The letters had required them to appear on Tuesday.

NO MONEY

He continued: “I realised that it is only proper we let the investigators finish their work before we summon them because we do not want to look like we want to compromise what the investigators are doing."

This came as advertisers raised questions on the integrity of the services they were getting following cases of over-billing and missing records.

Officials of two public universities said they were shocked when told their institution owed the agency millions of shillings despite them having paid for each of the adverts placed in the publication.

The officials showed Nation evidence of their payments to the agency. Records at the agency however showed that nothing had been received.

Recently, Mr Mucheru said that the government has no money to pay the local media for services rendered to GAA.

FRAUD

The DCI probe came after Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Noordin Haji stepped in, questioning the accumulated debt and how some of the services were acquired by the Agency.

The DCI is probing allegations that dummy companies may have illegally benefited from the advertising billions and not the media outlets contracted for the job. Advertising business is a lucrative venture.

Nation has so far established that dummy companies were created, some with names very close to those of existing media houses and publications, to which monies were paid once disbursements to genuine service providers were approved.

FAKE NAMES

A list of payments seen by the Nation, for instance, indicates that Sh21 million was paid between November 2017 and June this year to an entity variously referred to as The Star Publication, Star Publications and Star Publications Limited.

Only The Star Publications Limited, which publishes The Star, could be found at the company registry.

Another Sh2 million was paid to Liaison Media, which in other entries is shown as Liaison Media Nairobi. No media house registered under that name could be found at the company registry.