Health PS Nicholas Muraguri has apologised for threatening a Business Daily journalist after the Sh5 billion scandal expose.
Muraguri said he regretted the remarks and that they were demeaning to his status as a public servant.
"In the past few days, comments attributed to me, have been widely circulated," he said in a
letter to the Kenya Union of Journalists.
"I would like to state that indeed many of those comments are mine, made in circumstances around people well known to me."
He apologised to the Nation Media Group newspaper,
the media fraternity, colleagues in government and the public.
The newspaper had reported that Sh5 billion was stolen by the ministry's officials through manipulation of the Integrated Financial Management Information System.
claimed Muraguri came to the ministry's defence saying the government can get into newsrooms systems and see what they write before it is published.
"Someone can be reading your story while seated here. If there is need to hack Nation's system we can," he told a journalist in a phone message when asked about the audit report.
The union then demanded the Principal Secretary's resignation for "defending" corruption and threatening the journalist.
"Besides dancing on the graves of Kenyans, Muraguri disclosed that the government will consider hacking into systems of newsrooms, and spy on journalists," said secretary Eric Oduor
said.
KUJ asked President Uhuru Kenyatta to demand accountability by public officers who believe "espionage in newsrooms is the only cure to corruption in government ministries".