Corruption albatross burdens 11th Parliament as term ends

Public Accounts Committee Chairman Nicolas Gumbo was not watching television when former Devolution and Planning Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru claimed that members of the team he chairs had asked her for Sh10 million to help clear her name.

The sensitive and serious engineer was, however, told about it by someone who was, and in his characteristic fashion, fired off a text message to Ms Waiguru shortly after she told TV host Jeff Koinange about the purported extortion attempt.

“Hi Anne,” he said in the text message. “I’m not watching TV at the moment but I am told you have sensationally claimed (some) members of PAC, which I chair, asked you for 10m in order to ‘clear’ your name. While I find such a claim ludicrous, because you’ve always maintained you did no wrong, I believe you have a duty to the people of Kenya to name the individuals who asked you for money,” he said.

He finished off by saying that anything less than that explanation would amount to mass slander of the committee’s members and that would “certainly be actionable”.

Mr Gumbo told the Nation that Ms Waiguru did not respond to his text message. She was also never asked to elaborate her claims or name the MPs on PAC whom she said asked her for the Sh10 million.

REGULAR FEATURE

This episode is typical of the claims of corruption in committees that has become a regular phenomenon in Parliament. It is almost always the case that when a committee is inquiring a tender gone wrong, a State corporation accused of corruption or a senior public or State officer, there will be a claim that money has changed hands or that an attempt at extortion has been made.

National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi said the complaints about corruption have been a regular feature throughout his tenure.

“It is true, and that I can confirm. There have been many allegations and claims that members of various committees (have been involved in corruption),” said Mr Muturi.

He said his disappointment has been that people are not willing to follow up by making formal complaints or presenting evidence either to Parliament or the authorities who handle criminal matters.

“People are happier going to make claims without substantiating them. When that kind of matter happens, I also advise, because some of those claims verge on criminality. Please report to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations or the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission,” he said.

POSITIVE FOLLOW-UP

To date, the EACC is yet to report a positive follow-up on a complaint made against a parliamentary committee.

Members of the Agriculture Committee had been named in the report of the EACC tabled in Parliament by President Uhuru Kenyatta in 2015 when he was making his State of the Nation address. The EACC would later report that there was no evidence against the MPs.

But it was with events in PAC in 2015 that the reality of corruption in parliamentary committees was brought to light.

At the centre of the allegations was a claim that some members of the committee had approached a principal secretary and taken a bribe to write a favourable report.

When that failed to happen, some said that the principal secretary complained. They followed it up with their colleagues, initiated a motion of no-confidence against Mr Ababu Namwamba, the then-chairman and matters finally came to a head at the meeting on February 26 that year where the motion was voted on.

Mr Namwamba won on a technicality, but things had fallen apart in PAC and there was clearly no way they could work together.

Naturally, all of those accused of either giving or taking the alleged bribe denied everything. Part of the drama was that Mr Namwamba, or his bodyguard, had a recording of a conversation in which PAC member Samuel Arama was telling Cord leader Raila Odinga about the bribery.

In the end, PAC was disbanded, Mr Namwamba refused to apologise for making allegations against his colleagues and was suspended for four days and barred from being a member of the committee for the remainder of its life.

COMMITTEE'S CHAIRMAN

Mr Gumbo would eventually join PAC and, with some clever political manoeuvring, became its chairman.

Among the Namwamba-led PAC’s most significant inquiries was the one into the manner in which the Office of the Deputy President hired a jet for his use during a tour of eight African countries shortly after the Jubilee administration took power.

PAC was leaking like a sieve and before it could put together its final report, a draft was leaked to the press.

Other MPs were angry and when the time came to adopt the report, 15 months after it was tabled, it was roundly rejected, pouring down the drain more than a year’s work.

“If Kenyans ever wanted a clear signal that the Eleventh Parliament is not serious about fighting corruption, this is the signal,” said Mr Namwamba shortly after.

“This is a House that has been taken hostage by various forces that are not interested in a real sustained war against corruption and against misuse of public resources,” he said.

PAC’s work would once again be on the spot in the investigations into the loss of money at the National Youth Service. On the day it tabled its report on PAC, Elgeyo-Marakwet senator Kipchumba Murkomen repeated his allegation that its members had taken Sh40 million from banks to write a favourable report.

GOOD WORK

Mr Gumbo told the Nation last week that despite the repeated claims against PAC, it has done some good work.

“I think we have done a lot as three of our reports were adopted by the House. The 2013/14 audit report of the Judicial Service Commission and the Judiciary were adopted by the House, as was the National Youth Service report,” he said.

PAC’s report on the NYS received the most publicity regarding its recommendation that Ms Waiguru be subjected to a fresh investigation, a lifestyle audit and, if prosecuted and convicted, be barred from holding public office. Ms Waiguru has since gone to court to stop her prosecution on the basis of that report.

PAC also recommended the prosecution of the law firm co-owned by Mr Murkomen. The firm received Sh15 million from a company that was paid out of NYS’ accounts.

Mr Gumbo also sought to downplay the allegations against his team.

“The work of any oversight committee is not easy because it touches on powerful people who are always ready to fight back and therefore we are constantly under attack from people under investigation,” he said.

The Rarieda MP maintained that those who were mentioned in the NYS report should be made to account for the millions of shillings that got lost under their watch.

'SHILLINGS LOST'

“People should be made to account for the millions of shillings lost. PAC is not a committee that makes allegations,” said Mr Gumbo.

Going forward, Mr Gumbo suggested that all the investigating agencies such as the EACC, Directorate of Criminal Investigations should second their officers to PAC to help them in their work.

This recommendation has been made before, as House committees, particularly the Public Investments Committee and PAC, come across piles of evidence in the course of their investigations.

PIC, for example, uncovered serious fraud in the case involving Erad Suppliers against the National Cereals and Produce Board as well as in the Youth Enterprise Fund.

In the latter, the then Youth Fund chairman, Bruce Odhiambo and chief executive Catherine Namuye, were subsequently prosecuted.

In the Erad case, the evidence that the company used a void bank guarantee to secure the contract has since gone on to become part of the EACC’s evidence in court.

Mr Gumbo also urged Parliament to always come out and defend committees whenever they are under attack as it is not the committee that is being attacked but Parliament as an institution.