Three Garissa County officials charged over alleged Sh51m fraud

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Balambala MCA Abdi Ibrahim Daar and two senior Garissa County officials have been charged with 27 counts of corruption over a Sh51.4 million ghost procurement scheme.

The trio appeared before the Garissa Magistrate’s Court on Monday, where they denied charges ranging from abuse of office, forgery, and uttering of false documents, preferred against them by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The accused include MCA Abdi Ibrahim Daar, Director of Accounting Services Mohamud Dubow Korane, and Senior Principal Economist Yussuf Bethe Ali. 

A fourth accused, Qorjarey Enterprise and General Supplies Limited, a company in which Daar serves as a director, has also been charged with fraudulent acquisition of public property in what the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) described as a coordinated insider fraud.

The three officials were arrested by EACC officers on Sunday, February 22, 2026, following a lengthy investigation into suspected procurement irregularities at Garissa County Government covering the 2021 to2022 financial year. 

According to the charge sheet, the three allegedly conspired to defraud the Garissa County Government of Sh 51,495,253 between April and June 2022 by facilitating payments to Qorjarey Enterprise and General Supplies Limited for goods and services that were never procured and never delivered.  

MCA Daar, who simultaneously served as a county Social Development Officer and as director of Qorjarey Enterprise, faces several charges, including five counts of forgery and five counts of uttering false documents.  

He is accused of fabricating official tender acceptance letters, letters of award notification, payment vouchers, and contract agreements, and presenting them to the National Bank of Kenya and ABSA Bank to facilitate fraudulent withdrawals.

The forged documents related to four separate county government tenders purportedly for the supply of emergency food items to Balambala Sub-County, delivery of office furniture, and provision of emergency water trucking services, none of which, prosecutors allege, were ever genuinely procured or fulfilled.

 Accounting Director Korane faces five counts of abuse of office for allegedly approving the fraudulent payments and five additional counts of forgery for fabricating official county payment vouchers.

The payments Korane allegedly approved span a period of nearly three months, beginning with Sh14,528,968 approved between April 6 and 7, 2022, followed by Sh8,300,468 approved between April 14 and 19, 2022, then Sh4,804,568 approved between May 4 and 5, 2022.

He also approved two separate payments of Sh10,880,658 and Sh12,980,854, both approved in the final days of June 2022, bringing the total amount he is accused of fraudulently authorising to SH 51,495,253.  

 Senior Economist Ali faces five counts of abuse of office for allegedly raising fraudulent invoices for the same amounts in the county's Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS), the government's electronic payment platform, to facilitate the release of funds to Qorjarey Enterprise.  

The prosecution says the three officials worked in concert, with Korane and Ali providing internal approvals, while Daar handled the external presentation of forged documents to the banks. 

 The ODPP charge sheet states that the goods and services purportedly covered by the payments, ranging from emergency food relief to office furniture, were never procured by the County Government of Garissa nor supplied by Qorjarey Enterprise and General Supplies Limited.

The court subsequently granted each accused person a cash bail of Sh 2 million or a bond of Sh 5 million.

The prosecution was ordered to supply the defence with all witnesses and evidential material.

The case will be mentioned after two weeks for pretrial.