Piece by: James Mbaka

01 March 2023

• The Treasury is said to have overruled the Controller of Budget and paid Sh6.09 billion to acquire a 60 percent stake in Telkom Kenya.

• Controller of Budget Margaret Nyakang’o had told MPs that she refused to authorise the withdrawal.

Kimani Ichung'wah, the National Assembly Majority Leader has claimed that part of the Sh6.09 billion paid by the government to acquire stakes in Telkom Kenya was shared among powerful individuals.

The Kikuyu MP claimed that documents in the Kenya Kwanza administration possession show that the money was wired to offshore accounts two days after the August 9 general election.

He said even with the payment to acquire 60 percent stake in Telkom, the legal ownership of the company still remains unclear.

"The money was wired to accounts in Malaysia, then back to individual accounts in Kenya then again to Cayman islands," Ichung'wah said on Tuesday during a parliamentary session.

Speaking when supporting the first supplementary budget for the financial year 2022-23, Ichung'wah said the recipient accounts had been linked to powerful people in the former administration.

"When Kenyans were waiting for election results, other people were smiling as their accounts locally and abroad received billions of shillings," he said.

The Treasury is said to have overruled the Controller of Budget and paid Sh6.09 billion to acquire a 60 percent stake in Telkom Kenya from a UK-based private equity fund.

Controller of Budget Margaret Nyakang’o had told MPs that she refused to authorise the withdrawal of the billions to buy out Helios Investment Partners in Telkom Kenya in a deal that made the company fully State-owned.

The Treasury withdrew Sh6.09 billion on August 5, 2022, and paid Jamhuri Holdings Ltd, a Mauritius-based subsidiary of Helios in a transaction that lacked parliamentary approval.

The deal was closed in the last days of Uhuru Kenyatta’s presidency. Besides the Telkom Kenya deal, the Treasury spent another Sh16 billion without the approval of Parliament in the weeks leading up to the inauguration of President Ruto.

It disbursed Sh810 million to State House, Sh2.2 billion for building the military research hospital, and Sh4.5 billion for the discontinued maize flour subsidy.

Another Sh9.45 billion was allocated for road construction.