Two City Hall officials fail to explain Sh480m payment

Acting Nairobi County Secretary Gregory Mwakanongo, left, and Luke Gatimo when they appeared before the Nairobi County Assembly's Public Accounts Committee

NAIROBI, KENYA: Two former City Hall officials were on Wednesday hard-pressed to explain the payment of Sh480 million in legal fees.

Former finance executive Gregory Mwakanongo and former chief officer Luke Gatimu appeared before the accounts committee to answer the queries raised by the Auditor General.

The Auditor General's report said they had exceeded the Sh100 million budgeted for legal fees by Sh480 million. The report said the payments were made outside the Integrated Financial Management Information system (Ifmis), raising a red flag.

“We could not spend the money through the Ifmis system because the pending legal fees were from previous years. Some of the cases paid for had already been procured, meaning we could not procure them again through the integrated system,” explained Mr Mwakanongo.  

Mr Gatimu said the payments were as a result of court orders and decrees and the payments had to be hastened. He claimed that his department had presented a supplementary budget to the legal affairs committee in a bid to regularise the expenditure, but it was turned down.

Some committee members pointed out to him that supplementary budgets are presented to the county assembly, which then forwards them to the legal committee, and not the other way around.

Mwakanongo said he could not produce evidence to support his claims because he was not currently in office.

The committee ordered Mwakanongo and Gatimu to present the supplementary budget and copies of court orders and decrees during the next session.