Nairobi county secretary detained by EACC over graft at City Hall

Acting Nairobi county secretary Pauline Kahiga is being detained at EACC headquarters over graft allegations at City Hall.

Detectives on Wednesday stormed Kahiga's office in search of documents that could help ascertain corruption allegations at the county.

The officers were however interjected from forcibly arresting Kahiga and searching her office by head of security and compliance Tito Kilonzi.

Journalists were kicked out by the county's security officers as a push and pull between the EACC officers and the Inspectorate officers went on in Kahiga's office.

After an hour-long scuffle in the office, Kahiga was finally driven to the EACC offices and sources confirmed that key documents were also taken from the office by the detectives.

Since Governor Mike Sonko took over, the office of the county secretary has hardly been held substantively, a situation that has also raised eyebrows among the county assembly legislators.

The county secretary is the heartbeat of all operations by the Executive.

This comes at a time when Sonko's government has been queried by the Auditor General over financial malpractices and abuse of office.

Auditor General Edward Ouko in his 2017-18 audit findings said 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Sonko’s administration was also found to have irregularly withdrawn Sh6 billion from the county’s revenue account, Ouko's report said.