Nandi County procurement officer found dead as auditors query payments

Nandi, Kenya: Police in Nandi are investigating the death of County Procurement Officer Kevin Kemboi in a case suspected to be related to the ongoing audit of Nandi county financial accounts.

The lifeless body of Mr Kemboi (32) was found hanging by his neck on a used nylon rope which had been tied on a rafter inside a cowshed at his home in Kabutie Village in Kapngetuny location in Nandi County.

Before his death, Kemboi worked as a procurement officer in the departments of Health and Sanitation; and the department of Lands and Natural resources.

A suspected suicide note addressed to his wife which cited ‘stress at his work place’ as the reason for taking his own life.

‘Of late, I have been having stress at my work place…”read Mr Kemboi’s note.

A day before the official's death, leaked official documents from the two departments cited mass fleecing of county funds where hundreds of millions seemed to have been lost through illegal procurement procedures.

It followed the commissioning of an audit by Governor Stephen Sang to determine extent of corruption in various departments in the county.

In the documents signed by the deceased, Mr Kemboi sought to absolve himself from blame in corruption schemes within the two departments stating that millions in county funds had been paid to several contractors without his approval.

 The leaked document dated 4th September 2017 was addressed to the Head of Supply Chain management in the county, and the Chief Officer (CO) in charge of the Lands and Environment department.

In the documents, the deceased accused certain senior officials in the affected departments of sidelining him in the procurement process and forging his signatures to acknowledge receipt of undelivered supplies.

“Signatures were forged to pave way for payments, I however do not acknowledge receiving goods,” he wrote.

He also listed several suspicious tenders which he said were illegal but received payment.

In the police report, the deceased’s wife Joan Busieney reported that her spouse woke up at around 1 pm on that fateful Sunday and informed her that he was going to the sitting room to watch a football match.

It was only in the morning that the wife discovered her husband was missing from the family house. She found the one-sentence suicide note on the living room table.

Confirming the incident, Kapsabet OCPD Stephen Obara told The Standard that police received a call from Kapngetuny location chief Joseph Kogo who reported that the county official had committed suicide.

“We got a call from the area chief at around 7 am on Sunday who reported Mr Kemboi had hanged himself,” said the police boss.

Kemboi’s immediate boss CEC Dr John Chumo regretted the official’s death but termed the leaked documents as ‘fabrications’ saying he was not aware of any corrupt scheme in the Lands and Environment Department.

“We are however calling on all anti-graft and criminal investigations bodies to investigate the death in totality to shed light on the reasons behind the death,” said Chumo.

Anonymous sources in the county raised concern that the procurement officer may have been a victim of murder by people who wanted to silence him from revealing corruption schemes.

The police boss said they are not ruling out any leads, and said they are awaiting a postmortem and forensic report to unravel the true cause of his death.