House team challenges power firms' reports by private auditors

National Assembly Public Investment Committee Chairman Abdulswamad Nassir (L) and Ahmed Kolosh when the committee met KEBS officials on audit queries at Parliament on September 5, 2018. [Boniface Okendo/Standard]

A parliamentary committee has questioned audit reports on key parastatals in the energy sector that gave them a clean bill of health.

The Public Investment Committee (PIC) questioned the audit reports on Kenya Power Company, Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen), Geothermal Development Company (GDC), Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco) and National Oil Corporation of Kenya.

The committee accused private firms of clearing some parastatals even when investigative agencies found criminal culpability in their operations.

The team now wants investigations into possible collusion between the managers of the State corporations and the private firms hired to audit them.

Mvita MP Abdulswamad Nassir, who chairs the committee, yesterday said it was suspicious that while all parastatals audited by the Office of the Auditor General had always attracted questions, those audited by some private firms had not.

“Is it not suspicious that all these State corporations audited by the private firms are always being given a clean bill every successive year yet those audited by the Auditor General have issues flagged against them?” asked Mr Nassir.

Top managers

He said it was ironical that a private auditor had cleared the accounts of Kenya Power Company only for top managers of the State corporation to be arrested later.

“There is something that these private firms are not telling us. You cannot tell us that after looking into the accounts of such a company like Kenya Power, they could not pick any audit queries when all other companies audited by the Auditor General have questions raised against them,” he said during committee sittings in Parliament.

The MP said he had raised the issue with the Director of Criminal Investigations.