10 assembly staff in court over laptops tender

Ten county assembly employees yesterday appeared before the Anti-Corruption Court to answer to charges of flouting procurement rules and fraud.

The 10 appeared before Principal Magistrate Theresa Nyangena facing different counts.

Also facing the charges is a supplier, Antimak Office Technologies Ltd.

The first charge stated that as members of the Machakos County Assembly Tender Committee, they approved direct procurement of 60 laptops for county assembly members contrary to Section 74 of the Public Procurement and Disposal Act of 2005.

According to the charge sheet, the requirement for use of the procurement method had not been satisfied.

Nancy Wambui Wangai, who is the principal procurement officer, is separately accused of inviting requests for quotations for the supply of five laptops to the county assembly from unqualified persons who were not in the pre-qualified list of suppliers for the county.

Forged documents

Similarly, Raphael Makau, Nicholas Musyoka, Charles Kinyanjui Njuguna and Antimak Office Technologies Ltd are facing a third count of jointly engaging in fraud by submitting a false tax compliant certificate for the purchase of five laptops.

They are also jointly accused of fraudulently presenting a forged document to Felix Mbiuki, the clerk of the county assembly, purporting it to be a genuine tax compliant certificate issued by the Kenya Revenue Authority.

They are also said to have submitted a false letter authorising the procurement of five laptops, claiming it had been issued by Mitsumi Computer Garage.

The court ordered six of the accused to deposit a cash bond of Sh500,000; the rest were told to raise a Sh1 million cash bond to secure their release.

By the time we went to press, the accused had not raised the bonds.

The court fixed a hearing for January 12-16, 2015. The case will be mentioned on November 12.