Kenya Ports Authority comes under fire over altered books of accounts

Container freight section: Kenya Ports Authority is one of the largest parastatals in the country. [PHOTO: FILE]

By JAMES ANYANZWA

Top managers of the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) on Tuesday came under fire over what a Parliamentary watchdog committee termed as “…a manipulation of accounts to reflect false profits and forgery.”

Appearing before the Public Investments Committee (PIC) yesterday, the managers were under pressure to clear claims of forgery after information they presented to Parliament and the committee differed from that contained in the Auditor General’s report.

PIC noted differences in the information contained in an audit report issued by KPA management to Parliament and to the committee and what was presented by Charles Nyanyuki of the Audit Office.

The management led by managing director Gichiri Ndua was ordered to furnish the committee with the original report they had received from the auditors within 24-hours.

“There are serious discrepancies between what you have presented to Parliament and the committee and the Auditor General’s position,” the committee said.

“We will not leave this issue where it is. Someone might have tampered and we need to get an official explanation,” said Funyula MP Paul Otuoma, who questioned the rational of interrogating books that had already been tampered with.

The letterhead

“We can already see on the letterhead there is superimposition. There is something already wrong with the KPA logo. We need to be careful with the kind of standards we are setting,” he said. 

Chuka Igambang’ombe MP Onesmus Njuki said falsification of the auditors report was meant to mislead the committee. PIC vice chairman Kimani Ichung’wah said the committee would investigate the matter. KPA General manager in-charge of finance Catherine Mturi-wairi, however, denied they interfered with the auditor’ general’s report.  “This is a scanned copy of the auditor general’s report. We didn’t change anything,” she said.

KPA management was also found to have flouted the international financial reporting standards by treating the foreign exchange transactions in a statement of changes in equity rather than in the comprehensive income statement.

This led to the authority’s profit after tax for the 2010/2011 financial year being inflated by Sh132 million. Though the KPA management said it was an accounting failure, the committee read mischief saying the move was designed to make the organisation look healthy, financially.

“This is not an innocent mistake. It was calculated to attain certain targets,” said PIC vice chairman Kimani Ichung’wah.

The Auditor General had queried KPA’s suspicious allocation of four parcels of land valued at Sh230 million whose ownership documents were not available for audit.

But Mr Ndua blamed the issue on the commissioner of lands, who he said, irregularly allocated the land against the board’s decision.

 Also queried was the suspicious disposal of 15 plots valued at Sh557 million which was registered in the name of the defunct East African Railways and Harbours Corporation and whose assets and liabilities were taken over by KPA following the demise of the then East African Community in 1977.

The committee also queried why the court case over the sale of the four parcels of land has dragged on for 12-years, saying the move was tantamount to corruption.

The committee gave KPA management one week to provide information on who was the commissioner of lands at the time, who the allottees were, the status of the court case, judges, latest valuation of the parcel of land, latest valuation of the projects developed on these parcels of land, amount incurred on legal fees and value of the plots.