The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission have turned their spotlight on Siaya County following allegations that top County officers had stolen Sh400 million.
EACC Head of Corporate Affairs and Communication Erick Ngumbi said the county senior officials made suspicious withdrawals of the colossal amounts within a span of 12 days in August 2022.
Ngumbi emphasized that the transactions were done in total disregard of the moratorium stopping procurement, payment of allowances and pending bills during the transition period as they ushered the new Governor, James Orengo into office.
“For instance, an official in the Finance department received five payments with four of them made on the same day, August 31, 2022 and the last one made a week later on September 6, 2022,” Ngumi said.
The payments under contention were as follows: Sh225, 000 for travel and accommodation allowances, Sh93,000 tuition fee, Sh200,000 accommodation,
Sh250,000 tuition fee and a further Sh120,000 for advertising, awareness and publicity campaigns with all the payments done within a single day.
Another senior staff member was alleged to have received the payments including Sh200,000 travel cost, Sh450, 000 daily subsistence allowance as well as Sh,125,000 for Bank service commission charge respectively, Ngumbi said.
Separately, a support staff allegedly received Sh748,000 for purposes of contracted technical services. He added that further allegations indicated that Sh.112 million was channeled from the County Executive Bank Accounts to clerks of various County assembly committees.
As this was happening, Ngumbi said, three of the committee clerks received imprest varying between Sh650,000 to Sh760,000.
He pointed out that further investigations were still ongoing to inform appropriate legal action including criminal prosecution of any persons found culpable and recovery of the stolen public funds.
He said they are also conducting investigations over allegations of abuse of office and fraudulent acquisition of public funds amounting to Sh720 million which was said to have been spent on the installation of an ICU at Siaya Referral Hospital.
Curiously, it emerged that the hospital opened the ICU department even though there was no equipment and instead the county government installed ventilators that had earlier been donated by Kijabe hospital, explained Ngumbi.
In the same period, the county government staff who were said to have flatly objected to the fraudulent activities were transferred and replaced with new ones who were irregularly employed.
Ngumbi who made the remarks during a training forum for 30 journalists drawn from Western Kenya at a Kisumu hotel Friday, said the Commission has had its fair share of successes and failures but future programmes have been lined up to rejuvenate the fight against the corruption and misappropriation of public resources.
