Arrest of Nairobi County Officials for Revenue Diversion
From X/@EACCKenya
Earlier this week, EACC arrested two Nairobi County Officials in a probe into allegations of diverting county revenue through manipulation of the Nairobi Revenue Services portal. The suspects are Daniel Odidi Ganje, the Officer-In-Charge of the Data Office at St. Peter Cleavers Revenue offices in Starehe, and John Gachagua Mburu, a Mt. Kenya University Student on attachment at the same office.
They were processed at EACC Police Station on Tuesday and later released on cash bail pending arraignment after concurrence of the ODPP. In a fraudulent scheme to divert county revenue to personal accounts, the suspects had asked the complainant, who sought to pay KSh 45,000 annual parking fees for his commercial vehicles, to deposit the money into a private bank account belonging to the student, as opposed to the designated Nairobi County bank account. In exchange, he would be allowed to pay a lesser amount.
To assure the complainant of the viability of the deal, the suspects entered the registration details of the complainant’s vehicle into the revenue portal, which indicated full payment of the parking fees for the whole year despite not having paid anything to the County. Notably, diversion of revenue is prevalent in several county governments and is one of the reasons why most devolved units do not meet their revenue targets.
Investigations undertaken in the counties so far reveal that some senior county officials use students on attachment/ internship as conduits for theft of public funds, with some students being compelled to register companies or business names, which are later introduced into the IFMIS platform to facilitate execution of fraudulent schemes. Upon payments to those proxy companies, the students are asked to withdraw the monies sent or diverted to the bank accounts and deliver the same to their masters. This partly explains the Commission’s position that there is no big or small fish in the fight against corruption; all are criminals to be dealt with as such.
