Huduma namba firm moves to court to salvage its stay in Kenya

SAFRAN IDEMIA Executive Vice President Mathew Foxton(L) and his Vice Olivier Charlanes when they appeared before the National Assembly Public Accounts Committee on KIEMS kits tender at Parliament on Thursday 21/02/19.

A foreign company that supplied technology for the Huduma Namba registration has sued the National Assembly after MPs blacklisted the firm. Parliament recently recommended that Idemia (formerly IT Morpho) be barred from conducting any business in Kenya over its alleged role in procurement malpractices at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) before 2017 elections.

In its application filed at the High Court, Idemia argued that the National Assembly's decision was unfair and unlawful because the company was not given a chance to defend itself.

“(Idemia) was never notified of this contemplated action against it neither was it accorded an opportunity to defend itself before the aforesaid adverse and unlawful findings and recommendations were made against it," the company's lawyer Wilfred Lusi argued.

Sanctions imposed

"Further, the sanctions imposed and/or recommended to be imposed against the applicant for the alleged lack of local registration when it performed its contract (are) not provided for in law,” he added.

The firm claimed that it won a tender to supply IEBC with Kenya Integrated Electoral Management System kits in 2017. 

It then learnt that the commission had cancelled the tender on March 21, 2017. But IEBC later expressed its willingness to engage Idemia to supply an Integrated Election Management System, the company argued.

The firm claimed that IEBC still owed it money.

“The first respondent (Parliament) has inimically subsumed the role of the investigating agencies, the arbiters and concluded that the funds paid to the applicant were ostensibly unlawfully paid, in directing the third interested party (IEBC) to take immediate legal action to recover sums purportedly, unlawfully paid under the contract(s) entered into between itself,” argued Lusi.