Mung'aro throws Kingi under the bus over Sh1b Kilifi audit queries

Kilifi Governor Gideon Mung'aro has thrown under the bus his predecessor Senate Speaker Amason Kingi over a long standing audit query of Sh1billion paid to a private firm by the county government from 2014 to 2024.

The Senate County Public Accounts Committee threatened to summon former Kilifi County officials to explain the deal and resolved to invite the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) and Auditor General to conduct a forensic audit into the deal and appear before them with a detailed report.

The Senate Committee chaired by Homa Bay Senator Moses Kajwang raised concerns following the County administration consent agreement to pay Sh601million to a private firm, Raindrops Limited, on top of nearly Sh400 million already paid to the company over the last decade.

“Some of the key officials who have answers to these audit queries are based here in parliament with Speaker of the Senate, Amason Kingi being the one who oversaw it while serving as Kilifi Governor when these deals were signed, the former County Attorney also works here while the third individual a Member of the National Assembly,” said Mung'aro.

The Kilifi Governor faced tough questions from Isiolo Senator Fatuma Dullo, Nandi Senator Samson Cherargei, Nyamira Senator Okongo Mogen and Kitui Senator Enock Wambua with the focus being the highly suspicious, long-standing revenue collection contract worth Sh1 billion.

Before the Senators were stacks of heavily annotated dossiers compiled by the Auditor-General with the fiscal years under review spanning across 2014 to 2024, exposing a gaping hole in Kilifi County’s historical public finances with the Raindrops initially having demanded Sh2 billion for a breach of contract after the county attempted to terminate its services.

The deal, alongside bleeding municipal funds and technically insolvent water firms, formed a toxic financial cocktail that local taxpayers had been forced to swallow with the Governor who occupied the hot seat making it clear that he had nothing to do with the deals.

"We would like to know who are the beneficial owners of this firm, we need a name, a registry, a signature, this money left county coffers, but we see zero value for the people of Kilifi, who are the beneficiaries of this Sh1 billion revenue deal," asked Senator Dullo.

Governor Mung'aro threw his hands up occasionally rubbing his bald head in a gesture of absolute transparency mixed with frustration telling Senators that he did not have the complete CR12 document here to reveal every director of the firm in question.

The Governor made it clear that these agreements were conceptualised, signed and executed long before his administration took the oath of office with the revelation sending a visible jolt in the Senate committee with the past catching up with the present.

For years, the Auditor-General’s reports had flagged troubling financial anomalies in Kilifi County, including suspicious legal fees and highly unfavorable outsourced revenue tenders that marked the tenure of  Speaker Kingi when he served in the county as Governor for 10 years.

Raindrops Limited was contracted during the tenure of Kingi as Governor to automate and collect county revenue, including cess and parking fees and following contractual dispute, the High Court ordered SBM Bank to deduct Sh4million monthly from a joint county-corporate escrow account starting in December 2016.

Senators demanded an investigation into how these continuous payments were allowed without clear value to the public because the current administration lacked the original documentation and institutional memory to justify these past expenditures, the committee's path forward became immediately clear.

Kajwang said that they will officially invite the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) to probe this matter, and we will issue formal summonses to the former Kilifi County officials said that they can shed light into this grave matter that has bedevelled the county for many years.

“We cannot allow a culture of unaccountability where incoming regimes blame the ghosts of the past, while the ghosts of the past hide behind new national titles, we are to hold all officials involved in this financial mess accountable,” said Kajwang.

Nandi Senator Samson Cherarkey strongly condemned the massive financial payouts and skewed contracts originating from the previous county administration stating that all the officials who were involved must come before the committee and explain their role clearly.

“We must summon the former Kilifi County officials to shed light on what happened during the tenure, this is more than what see in Netflix movies, nobody should be allowed to walk away with the residents of Kilifi likely to have lost Sh1 billion,” said  Cherarkey.

Governor Gideon Mung'aro officially terminated a long-standing, 15-year revenue collection contract with Raindrops Limited which was originally signed in 2014 under the region's first governor (now Senate Speaker) Amason Kingi.