The Public Accounts Committee has decided to broaden its probe into the theft of Sh1.6 billion NYS cash following fresh details linking 17 more banks to the payments.
This brings the total number of banks involved in the transmission of the NYS proceeds to 28.
Eleven of them have been cleared. The banks hold domain accounts for hundreds of companies contracted by NYS as suppliers and are said to have transacted the sums paid to the firms since 2013.
PAC chairman Nicholas Gumbo yesterday said the committee will request the DCI and the EACC to look into the transactions. “We’re talking about figures probably never heard in this room, running into billions of shillings,” he said at a press conference at Parliament Buildings.
More than 100 firms were involved in the NYS scam. The banks named so far include Equity Bank, Diamond Trust Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Kenya Commercial bank, Cooperative Bank, Barclays Bank, Consolidated Bank of Kenya, First Community Bank, Bank of Baroda, I&M Bank, Transnational Bank, National Bank, NIC Bank and Chase Bank.
Others are Bank of Africa, Housing Finance, Jamii Bora, Sidian Bank, Commercial Bank of Africa, Fidelity Bank, Eco Bank, CFC Stanbic, Old Mutual Bank and African Bank Corporation.
Gumbo said the financial institutions will have to appear before PAC or send written submissions to explain the nature of transactions they carried out.
He said there is no obvious impropriety and culpability implied against the banks, but the truth will emerge once they tell their sides of the story.
“We’re not saying they are culpable.The only way to discount that is through investigations,” the Rarieda MP said. “As a committee, we do not intend to sum up our probe and write a report, only for people to later start pointing fingers at X or Y, saying they were involved but never summoned.”
Gumbo said investigations will exonerate companies and banking institutions that did genuine business and prescribe culpability for those that could have connived to swindle the public through corrupt dealings. He criticised the EACC, accusing it of failing to conduct a thorough probe.