Ex-Nyandarua Governor found guilty of procurement irregularities in Ksh.50M corruption case

Former Nyandarua County Governor Daniel Waithaka has been convicted of procurement irregularities and failing to comply with procurement laws during his tenure as county boss.

Waithaka was found guilty of the offences by the Nyahururu Anti-Corruption Court on Thursday. He was convicted alongside former County Executive Committee Member for Water, Energy, Environment, and Natural Resources, Grace Wanjiru Gitonga.

“The court found them guilty of two other charges of engaging in a project without prior planning and willful failure to comply with procurement laws,” said the Office of the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) in a statement on X.

“The court heard that on April 30, 2014, at the Nyandarua County Government offices, the two, failed to comply with the Public Procurement and Disposal Act, 2006 and unlawfully procured the services of M/s TAHAL Consulting Engineers Limited without a procurement plan for the 2013/2014 financial year, contrary to Section 26(3)(a) of the Act.”

Further, Waithaka was convicted separately for abuse of office.

“The court found that on or about April 4, 2014, he used his office to improperly confer a benefit to M/s TAHAL Consulting Engineers Limited by awarding a contract for the development of the County Water Master Plan and the design review of the Ol Kalou Town Sewerage System without following the required procurement process,” said the ODPP.

The case will be mentioned on March 20, for mitigation and sentencing.

In 2018, then DPP Noordin Haji noted that Waithaka flouted procurement laws by awarding the contract to M/S Tahal Consulting Engineers Ltd in December 2014 with disregard to the law.

The company, which was to redesign the Ol Kalou Town sewerage system, was reportedly irregularly paid Ksh.50,470,513.

Before moving to court, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) conducted investigations into the accused persons and discovered that the former governor and the five county officials engaged with two TAHAL officials to develop a County Water Master Plan and to design the Ol Kalou Town Sewerage System without following the procurement laws and regulations.

The county paid Ksh.23,895,513 as an advance payment for "consultations" and a subsequent sum of Ksh.26,575,000 for the same but no services were rendered.

The EACC later discovered that the two so-called directors, Chen Yochanan Ofer and Albert Attias, had been disowned by TAHAL company even before the payments were remitted via RTGS to a bank account in Tel Aviv, Israel. The pair are said to have disappeared immediately after the payments were made.

Efforts to track down the money proved futile as Kenya and Israel do not have mutual legal assistance arrangements and Israel's foreign policy also prohibits handing over of its citizens to be tried in foreign jurisdictions.