Youth fund director alleges cover-up in fraud probe

Youth Enterprise Fund board member Clement Ayungo.

The Youth Enterprise Fund board did not approve the hiring of private investigators to probe the mysterious death of a fund employee, a board member has claimed.

Clement Ayungo said he has not seen the probe report on the death of Simon Mwangi Gathika because it has not been tabled before the board.

“We have been co-operating with the police on the matter. We have gone to Mombasa severally to assist police in their investigations. As to why [suspended CEO Catherine] Namuye hired the private investigator that is for her to tell,” said Mr Ayungo.

He said investigations into the death should be de-linked from the probe into the Sh180 million fraud at the youth fund.

Ayungo believes Mr Gathika’s death had nothing to do with the youth fund theft and that it is being linked for purposes of a cover-up.

“How would a driver be involved in the Sh180 million matter?” he posed. “What they are also not telling you is that this is a driver who was based in Mombasa, not Nairobi. If we came with him from Nairobi that would be a different matter. And why was he not driving Namuye or Bruce [Odhiambo] since the Sh180 million matter involves them more intimately than any other person?”

Took him in

While absolving himself from blame, Ayungo said he did not invite the driver to the South Coast party.

He said he was surprised to see Gathika arrive at the party deep in the night and despite telling him he did not wish to be picked up.

Ayungo says he took him in when he arrived and wanted to serve him whiskey but Gathika refused and instead asked for wine.

“I told him to serve himself wine. In fact the guy never drank much. I think he only took one glass of wine or so,” he said.

He agrees he was the first person to sight Mwangi after drowning.

“I didn’t know it was him. I spotted someone lying at the bottom of the pool when I went to fetch my phone. I tried to rescue him as I called out the rest of the people around and we managed to pull him out,” he said.

He says the group did their best to save him including trying to resuscite him, calling an ambulance and rushing to meet the ambulance when it appeared like it was delaying.

How then did Gathika know the directions to the party when he never dropped Ayungo in the first place?

Not authorised

Ayungo says he was with him all through as he received directions to the party venue. “He must have heard when I was being directed, and of course he would know Kivulini since he worked in Mombasa.”

 He said Gathika had not driven any board member for months before that weekend. He also wondered why the secretariat led by Namuye assigned only Gathika to drive all the board members around that weekend.

“The Mombasa meeting was not even authorised by the board. It was the CEO and the chairman’s directive for the board members to go to Mombasa to lobby area MPs on some matter. We never approved it as a board,” he said.

Ayungo says he did not believe that Gathika was murdered: “If he was, then I also want to know the truth about it.”