An encounter between suspended Youth Affairs PS Lilian Mbogo Omollo and an agent pushing for payments for a company owned by President Uhuru Kenyatta’s uncle is alleged to have broken the camel’s back before the NYS scandal gushed in public.
The encounter took place behind the scenes of the famous “handshake” meeting between Opposition leader Raila Odinga and retired President Mwai Kibaki at his home in Muthaiga on April 20, just three weeks before the scandal broke out.
The allegations are contained in an explosive self-recorded statement by Ms Omollo dated May 2, 2018 and handed over to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) before the PS was arrested.
And while we are not at liberty to discuss the ongoing 10 cases against 47 suspects accused of swindling taxpayers Sh468 million, evidence in our possession shows there is a lot of money out there that the State has either ignored or doesn’t want to investigate.
Also in contention is the fact that some investigatory officers received millions of shillings in kickbacks from the suspects to shield them from prosecution. The suspects being held at Industrial Area Prison told Saturday Standard some of them were arrested even after they parted with cash on several occasions, which is part of the reason the tide has turned on the lead prosecutor.
Secret documents
“Every time you refused or were slow to release the money demanded, you would be called to record another statement,” one suspect said.
Omollo recorded a second statement on May 2.
On May 2, the day she was arrested, the suspended PS reiterated contents of her statement before the police. A study of the statement and a trove of documents marked ‘secret’ in our possession expose high level power play, a circus of investigations and questions on the existence of NYS suspects the State is not keen on prosecuting.
In her statement, Omollo has blamed her woes on among other things, a push to release payment to Petro Kenya and Horizon Ltd for supply of fuel which she had stopped. She also blames resistance to verification of payments.
The pressure to release the payments was made in the presence of Head of Public Service Joseph Kinyua who had requested her “to accompany him to Muthaiga where President Kibaki was meeting Raila.”
“At the function, by pure coincidence, I met a man, whom I had never met prior, and who, as soon as he was introduced to me, informed me he has payment claims he was following up at the NYS,” said the PS, who was returned to Lang’ata Women’s Prison on Wednesday.
“The man introduced himself as Githinji and said he works with Petro Kenya and Horizon group of companies which supplied petroleum products to the NYS under the former management,” she continued.
“The man further informed me in the presence of the Head of Public Service that the person who had been assisting him on the claims at NYS was Captain Michuki whom we had recently removed from the service,” she said.
Michuki, a former deputy director at the NYS, is among suspects in the case whose transfer from the service triggered a fall out in the top leadership. That fall out was exposed by this newspaper two weeks ago as having contributed to the spilling of the scandal.
Michuki had the alternate Authority to Incur Expenditure (AIE) between January 26, 2016 and June 31, 2016 when he was dropped like a hot potato.
But even after his rights as an AIE holder were withdrawn, Omollo says in her statement that he made a number of attempts to access the IFMIS system, prompting Treasury to notify the Ministry of Youth Affairs.
She also accuses him of flouting NYS procedures -- in one instance, he wrote to a bank asking it to open two accounts. “The bank notified us of the anomaly,” said Omollo.
Petro Kenya Oil Company Ltd is co-owned by businessman Gor Semelango (53 per cent) and Paul Gatheca Muhoho (47 per cent). Gatheca is the younger brother to President Uhuru Kenyatta’s mother, Mama Ngina and the father to former Kiambu legislator Anne Nyokabi Gathecha.
On Wednesday, Semelango told The Standard that he was an innocent petroleum importer who supplied to Horizon Ltd. “I delivered the fuel to NYS in the tender awarded to Gethi’s Horizon Ltd, but we did not know he would be unable to pay for it,” he said.
Horizon Ltd is owned by Ben Gethi, who was heavily mentioned in the first NYS scandal. Although Gethi was never successfully convicted, assets worth Sh585 million were traced and recovered from him by the government. Horizon Enterprises supplied oil and lubricants, while his firm Lateco Technologies supplied foodstuffs to NYS in the first scandal.
Under the arrangement, according to Semelango, fuel was delivered directly to NYS storage facilities.
“Once I get the order, the buyer asks me where they want the fuel delivered and I take it there,” Semelango said.
Petro Kenya was paid Sh68 million after a protracted dispute with Horizon Ltd which had sub-contracted them to deliver the fuel to NYS.
Despite NYS having never contracted Petro Kenya, the Office of the Attorney General, in a letter dated November 3, 2017 went ahead to advice Omollo to pay them off their claims against Horizon.
Simple advisory
“It is our considered view that the NYS does not have any reasonable grounds to mount a successful defense against the claim,” Charles Mutinda argued in a brief legal advisory on behalf of the AG.
In the seemingly simple advisory to a controversial matter, the AG had barely begun justifying his arguments when he aptly concluded: “In view of the above, NYS is advised to promptly settle the debt to avoid further escalation of costs and by consent of the parties the matter be marked as urgent.”
In her statement, Omollo said her refusal to release payments to Petro Kenya and Horizon during the meeting at Kibaki’s residence was the final trigger before the scandal broke out.
She claims that Captain Michuki sent her threatening messages over the incident, which she forwarded to the Head of Public Service. It did not end there.
“A few days later, Captain Michuki bumped into one of the NYS suppliers at a social establishment. He told this supplier to inform me that his only interest was becoming the acting Director General of the NYS for one year before his retirement and if I ensured this was done, the current investigations into NYS would be called off,” claimed Omollo.
This lack of policy in payment of suppliers was one of the red flags raised by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) in its assessment of the NYS after the first scandal.
vachuka@standardmedia.co.ke
