Hassan off the hook as court ‘clears’ him in Sh4b procurement scam

KENYA: A Nairobi court has ordered that the name of Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) chairman Issack Hassan be expunged from a government report that accused him of gross financial mismanagement and administrative negligence during preparations for the 2013 elections.

On May 29, High Court judge Isaac Lenaola ruled in favour of Mr Hassan in regards to the allegations levelled against him by Auditor General Edward Ouko, who had reported that he allowed an interested party into a meeting prior to the procurement of the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) kits in 2012.

The Auditor General’s report found that Hassan had acted improperly in the procurement of the kits from Canada. “As the chair of the meeting of August 7, 2012, he allowed the presence of Mr Tom Colby in the meeting and this is what laid the ground for single sourcing by the Canadian government and Morpho Canada, which led to the Kenyan government being supplied kits at inflated prices,” said part of the AG’s report.

The kits were sourced on government-to-government basis after the internecine wrangling within IEBC doomed its efforts to get the kits from independent suppliers. Colby was an official at the Canadian embassy in Nairobi.

Ouko also proposed that other IEBC officials, including then CEO, be surcharged for the loss of money. The auditor said Colby’s presence gave the Canadian government undue advantage over other competitors and this ultimately led to single-sourcing of the kits at inflated prices. Consequently, the auditor recommended that Hassan be surcharged about 37 million Euros (Sh4 billion) being the amount that the government lost in the process.

The report was handed over to Parliamentary Accounts Committee (PAC) in June last year and Hassan moved to court the next month seeking removal of his name from the document on grounds that he was never accorded a chance to respond to the auditor’s claims.

PAC carried out investigations in to the BVR kit procurement as well as other dealings by IEBC for the general election in which the tax payer reportedly lost millions of shillings. However, it delayed tabling its report to the National Assembly after allegations of corruption dogged its work, leading to its disbandment earlier this year.

Fair conclusion

The report was tabled in Parliament on Tuesday last week where debate centred on Ouko’s recommendation that Hassan and other senior government officials be surcharged for the money lost.

It would seem that Parliament was oblivious of the court’s ruling requiring that the Auditor General expunges his adverse recommendations on Hassan in his report.

The court ruled in his favour, saying the meeting in which Mr Colby attended on August 7, 2012, although attended by all IEBC commissioners and the secretariat, was called by the government and not the commission.

The meeting had been called by the government in last-ditch efforts to have Kenyans use electronic voting for the first time so as to avoid cases of vote manipulation.

Justice Lenaola found that Colby had been invited by government officials including representatives from the Office of the President, the Prime Minister’s office, Treasury and the Attorney General.

“...it is therefore my finding that the petitioner was never afforded an opportunity of being heard...The petitioner must be heard so that there can be fairness in the whole audit process,” ruled Justice Lenaola.

Ouko, in his defence, told the court that he did not see a reason to invite Hassan for an interview since the documents he had were enough for him to reach a fair conclusion.