NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 21 \u2013 Six people have been charged in connection with the alleged loss of Sh348.9 million from the Homa Bay County Government through the irregular award of a construction tender.<\/p>\n
The six appeared before Chief Magistrate Ada Obura at a Kisii law court, where they all pleaded not guilty to multiple counts related to abuse of office, conflict of interest, and unlawful payments.<\/p>\n
Those charged are former Homa Bay County Assembly clerk Daniel Odhiambo, Faith Odhiambo, Japhet (Patrick) Tonui, Mary Oyuka, Roseline Odhiambo, and Hartland Enterprises Limited.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors allege that on 10 February 2022, Daniel Odhiambo abused his office by unlawfully awarding a contract to Hartland Enterprises Limited and failing to ensure the company provided a valid performance guarantee. This allegedly led to the illegal payment of Sh66,714,924 from county funds.<\/p>\n
Patrick Tonui, a quantity surveyor, is accused of improperly conferring a benefit of Sh31,597,605 to the firm on 15 April 2021 by preparing an irregular payment certificate for a proposed office block project.<\/p>\n
Faith Odhiambo, then acting clerk of the county assembly, is accused of facilitating the approval of Sh31,597,605 to Hartland Enterprises Limited on 24 June 2021 without a valid payment voucher and without ensuring a performance guarantee was in place.<\/p>\n
The court also heard that the accused persons allegedly participated in transactions linked to private land intended for the project, raising conflict-of-interest concerns.<\/p>\n
All six denied the charges.<\/p>\n
Defence lawyers argued that the accused were not flight risks and asked the court to grant reasonable bail terms.<\/p>\n
In her ruling, Chief Magistrate Ada Obura granted each accused cash bail of Sh5 million or a bond of Sh30 million with two sureties of a similar amount.<\/p>\n
The case will be mentioned on 2 February.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 21 \u2013 Six people have been charged in connection with the alleged loss of Sh348.9 million from the Homa Bay County Government through the irregular award of a construction tender. The six appeared before Chief Magistrate Ada Obura at a Kisii law court, where they all pleaded not guilty to multiple counts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}