• Governor claims auditors demanded hefty bribes in exchange for a favourable report. Said he refused and as a result the report was damning.
• In his 2017-18 report, the Auditor General said the Sonko administration could not account for expenditures running to nearly Sh20 million.
Image: COURTESY
Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko yesterday rejected the Auditor General's report questioning Sh20 billion county expenditures and said auditors demanded millions of shillings for a favourable report.
In a rare attack at the National Audit Office, Sonko told Senators that some auditors handling Nairobi city’s accounts openly solicited fat bribes.
He told Senators that Eduard Ouko's auditors resorting to incriminating the county government after he declined their demands.
Efforts to get a comment from the office of the Auditor General were unsuccessful. It did not return calls or respond to text messages.
The governor appeared before the Senate's County Public Accounts and Investment Committee.
He said he has evidence linking auditors to extortion at City Hall during the audit period.
"I shall be willing to make some very sensitive allegations on auditors based in Nairobi," Sonko said at the opening of the session that lasted several hours.
He said the report, which allows the county a disclaimer, is affected by the allegations of financial irregularities.
"I shall be discrediting the report. I have evidence for each allegation. This (audit report) is a case of a deal gone sour."
Ouko in his 2017-18 audit findings says Sonko’s administration could not provide supporting documents for expenditures running to nearly Sh20 billion.
Ouko cited unexplained withdrawals, payments to contractors and unbanked cheques as some of the avenues that could have been exploited by the administration to misuse funds.
The flagged transactions include an unaccounted for Sh209 million in cash withdrawal from KCB account in respect of an officer.
The county was also found to have irregularly paid suppliers Sh381 million and was holding an undisclosed bank balance of Sh3 billion, the audit report said.
Sonko’s administration was also found to have irregularly withdrawn Sh6 billion from the county’s revenue account, Ouko's report said.
Sonko was pushed by Senators to explain the Sh7 billion unexplained difference between the amounts the county declared as having collected in its own revenue and the amount collected by JamboPay.
City Hall had indicated that it had collected Sh 10,157,594,130 as own revenue, while banking records in respect to JamboPay showed Sh8,301,362,450 was collected during the same period.
In mitigation, the governor blamed the poor revenue on the prolonged political tension after the last general election and failure by well-connected politicians to pay rates.
He cited a company — Seven Stars Media Limited — allegedly owned in part by Nairobi Senator Johnson Sakaja as among business enterprises that evade paying rates.
He said Seven Stars Media owes City Hall Sh40 million. It is involved in outdoor advertising among other media ventures.
The governor was at pains to explain Sh18.7 million [for beautification], which according to records tabled before the committee, was funded from the county coffers. Soko, however, said that the money came from his personal funds.
“We have evidence of payment under that program, this is the first time we are talking of perjury. Someone is lying under oath. We will refer the matter to the DPP,” Kajwang said.
“Your insistence that public funds were not used and your own records show money was paid to casuals under Nairobi beautification program.”
The Governor promised to launch investigations into how public money was used to finance the pilot project which he maintained he funded from his own pocket.
“I will do my internal investigations. I am shocked. What I have tabled is the truth. I have tabled evidence,” Sonko told the senators.
The governor will appear again before the oversight committee today to respond to queries.
(Edited by V. Graham)