City Hall paid a law firm Sh250 million before it had raised a fee note in the financial year 2018-2019, according to documents presented to the County Assembly Legal and Justice committee last week.
Overall, a total of Sh795.9 million was paid to 48 law firms in the period under review. Only eight of the firms presented fee notes.
Members of the County Assembly have in the past raised concerns over loss of public funds through the legal department.
According to the documents, 335 cases were handled by the legal department with only 12 of them successful. The rest were either withdrawn or lost.
The session was chaired by committee vice-chair Moses Ogeto.
Minority leader David Mberia demanded asked why payments were made before fee notes were raised as the requirement of the law.
Senior legal counsel Evans Mugire responded: "Unfortunately due to lack of time we were not able to present all the documents with the fee notes. Our officers are looking at the files and will come up with the list and present it to the committee."
He explained that there were no internal lawyers at City Hall in the period under review, hence the outsourcing of legal services.
Kariobangi North MCA Julius Njoka sought to know why 24 law firms out of 48 were paid in a record two months.
"Let's be honest and stop joking with money. How can those law firms be paid in June and July? Does it even make sense?" he asked.
Mugire said the payments were made as per the list of pending bills presented to the department.
Nominated MCA Silvia Museiya asked why Sh795.9 million was paid only to the law firms yet the county's allocation for the clearance of the pending bills in the FY 2018-2019 was Sh2.5 billion.
Museiya suspected that the legal department colluded with the law firms to siphon off money from City Hall given that no case had been handled by county lawyers in the year under review.
"There may have been collusion. It appears that people purport to represent you, draw legal fee only to later withdraw the case and demand payment," she said.
The MCA accused the department of bias, noting that two firms collectively handled 17 cases with one of them being paid Sh38.1 million and the other Sh120.1 million.
Former auditor-general Edward Ouko flagged the legal department over unauthorised payments of Sh592.4 million in the 2016-17 financial year.
In that FY, the department’s legal costs were Sh645.3 million against a budgetary allocation of Sh105 million.
Last year in June, the assembly was concerned that a lot of money was spent on outsourcing of legal services yet the county has eight lawyers.
