Africa-Press – Kenya. EACC detectives on Friday raided the offices of the Siaya County treasury department.
Led by the EACC Western region manager George Oira, the team carted away volumes of critical documents as probe into the Sh400 million scandal launched last week gathers momentum.
As a team of detectives drawn from the Kisumu regional office combed through files at the offices located at the county government headquarters in Siaya, another one was at the homes of the offices spread across the county .
Speaking to the Star on phone, the regional manager described the operation that caught those targeted unaware, as successful.
” The search conducted by our teams in the homes of the officers and in their respective offices yielded great results because we managed to obtain critical documents that are very relevant to the investigation at hand,” he said.
He said the raid targeted the homes and offices of six County officers who served at the finance department.
“We believe that what we have retrieved from the searches will help to crack open the case,” he said .
The Star has established that four top officials, including former finance chief officer Denis Nyonje were picked for interrogation and statements recording at the EACC Kisumu regional office.
Nyonje was suspended last year alongside three other senior finance officers by former governor Cornel Rasanga after DCI launched another probe into Sh600m scandal.
Over 50 staff from the county government were grilled by DCI in Kisumu for a week over the matter which is still pending investigation.
According to a detective who took part on the Friday EACC raid, two of the top officers targeted escaped the morning dragnet.
He spoke on condition of anonymity since he is not authorised to speak to the media on behalf of the commission.
“They are still at large and being sought after so that they can also record their statements with the investigators,” said the detective.
Siaya County government has lately been in the news over claims of disappearance of Sh400 million said to have been withdrawn head of the August 9 election.
The money, according to documents seen by this writer were paid out to 33 officers from the county government of Siaya.
In some of the transactions, certain officials ,amongst them aides to top county officials pocketed millions of shillings paid as imprests to facilitate meetings.
Despite the requirements that an officer can be allowed imprest of up to only Sh700,000 which must be surrendered first before requesting for another, documents in our possession indicates officers received cash amounting to over Sh1 million in a single day and continued to receive more without surrendering imprest advanced earlier.
Siaya governor James Orengo has since sent on compulsory leave, the county secretary and all the chief officers.
The governor noted that the move was important to allow a task force he formed to carry out financial audit in the operations of the devolved unit time to work.
Orengo has also suspended payment of all pending bills .
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