How ‘chicken gang’ used polls to loot public funds
GRAFT | Filings by prosecution paint IIEC officials as pathetic, desperately greedy, broke and literally begging for bribes
A British company met the travel and hotel accommodation costs for top electoral commission officials, who travelled to the United Kingdom as it sought to influence them into awarding it tenders for printing election material used in the 2010 referendum, prosecution documents filed in a London court have revealed. UK prosecutors have said that the firm, Smith & Ouzman, paid for the four-day tour by the Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) chairman Issack Hassan, Chief Executive Officer James Oswago, headof legal services Praxedes Tororey, commissioner Ken Nyaundi and one other person only identified as Sang to the UK including booking their hotel accommodation barely a month before the referendum.
Hotel costs amounting to Sh421,400 were later deducted from “the bribes eventually paid out to the officials”, the prosecutor said in their filing. “The election bosses were in the UK to assess the firm’s capacity to print election materials,” according to the documents. Smith & Ouzman is accused of paying a series of bribes, disguised as commissions, to the election officials. The payments were made through the company’s agent in Nairobi, identified in the court documents as Trevy James Oyombra. In email communications between Mr Oyombra and Smith &Ouzman bosses in London, the commission is variously referred to as “chicken” or “comm” or “comm+O” to indicate the official to whom the “commission was paid”.
Allegations relate to 2009 and 2010 and show how the “commissions”, on average 30 per cent of the contract sum, inflated the cost of elections. The company and its top managers have also been accused of bribing officials of public institutions in three other African countries besides Kenya. According to the documents, the senior managers also influenced public officials in Ghana, Mauritania and Somalia, paying them millions of shillings to win tenders for printing materials. Through their action, the documents say, the managers and the company skewed the award of competitive tenders in their favour. The documents show tendering at the IIEBC was a big joke, the process was so cooked up that Smith and Ouzman were given the competing bids and told in advance what excuses would be used to disqualify them. The court filings say that the company paid out up to Sh50 million to top election officials to win tenders for the supply of election material in four by-elections — Shinyalu, South Mugirango, Bomachoge and Matuga — and the 2010 referendum. Other major players in the shocking corruption ring include Mr Davies Chirchir who at the time was a senior manager at the IIEC, the commission’s former deputy CEO, Mrs Gladys Boss Shollei and a senior procurement officer at the elections body,
Mr Kenneth Karani. Forensic investigations by UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) reveal that in total, S&O received 10 payments worth Sh192 million from IIEC between September 2009 and December 2010. “From that sum S&O retained £980,834. £380,859 was paid to Trevy’s bank account,” the filings show. Of that sum, the prosecution said that it was agreed between the defendants and Mr Oyombra that £337,993 was to be paid out as bribes to the IIEC officials to secure future contracts. The filings say: “On 18th August, 28th September, and 8th December 2010, S&O received payments for this contract (the exhibit number is given). The receipt of the first payment prompted an email enquiry on 24/8/10 from Trevy to Nicholas Smith (the exhibit number is given): “let me know once you send the commission for the referendum.
Will graft ever end in kenya?
Gazeti Kenya
0 comments: