Sai Consulting, an Indian based engineering firm with operations in Kenya has been handed a two-year sanction by the World Bank over corrupt deals in Africa.
The sanctions are in connection with corrupt practices during the company's participation in three projects in Africa including the East Africa Trade and Transport Facilitation Project, which closed in 2015 designed to improve trade and transport facilitation in the region.
SAI, which had contracts to build and manage several border posts in Tanzania, offered cash payment vouchers and gifts to project officials to expedite invoice payments, which is a corrupt practice.
In 2014, the firm won a design tender for the Lamu-Garissa highway which is part of East Africa Trade and Transport Facilitation Project by Africa Development (Bank AFDB).
AfDB settled on the firm out of the six contractors which submitted bids for the over a two million dollar tender.
The company quoted $2.16 million (Sh220.5 million) for environmental impact assessment and Sh1 million for detailed design of the road after scoring 70.58 points at the technical evaluation stage.
The global lender also accused the Gujarati based engineers of paying bribes to win tenders for Mozambique Roads, and Bridges Management and Maintenance Project, and the Ghana Transport Sector Project.
SAI was sanctioned with conditional non-debarment, which means that it remains eligible to participate in World Bank-financed projects as long as it complies with certain corporate compliance obligations that are defined in a settlement agreement.
The settlement agreement is between the World Bank and both SAI and SYSTRA, a France-based international engineering and consulting group that acquired 65 per cent of SAI in 2014.
According to World Bank, the sanction was reduced after SYSTRA voluntarily disclosed SAI’s corrupt practices to the World Bank Group’s Integrity Vice Presidency (INT).
