Activist Okiya Omtatah has written to the Central Bank of Kenya governor Patrick Njoroge claiming major fraud in the planned printing of secure new Kenya currency bank notes.
In a letter dated November 21, Omtatah alleges that the fraud is being carried out by unscrupulous members of CBK staff, without the knowledge of the governor.
He gave reference to the origination and design tender awarded to De La Rue International Limited earlier this year and the restricted tender which closed yesterday.
Omtatah says earlier in the year after undercutting competition by bidding a mere US$0.1, which was tantamount of offering a free service, De La Rue was awarded the tender to design the new currency notes. He has pointed out technical specifications included in the tender that was developed on basics of the designs.
De La Rue did not refer to or accord with paragraph six of the design and origination tender number CBK/64/2016-2017.
“De la Rue International Limited then designed and produced bromides with inferior security features which were skewed to favour production of the bank notes using obsolete machinery at the local plant in Ruaraka, which has no capacity to produce the high technical, state of the art bank notes with modern anti counterfeiting security features the CBK had commissioned.”
We hope that the governor will intervene in time to ensure that the anomalies pointed out are corrected before the award of the restricted tender.
He says failure by Njoroge to rectify will necessitate recourse at the bank’s risk in costs, and for orders to quash the restricted tender.
On Tuesday the Central Bank of Kenya got a reprieve after the High Court rejected a bid that had sought to bar it from opening tenders for printing the new design Kenyan currency.
Justice Chacha Mwita declined to issue the orders after De La Rue moved to court last week seeking to stop the tender process.