Earlier this month, the National Assembly Public Investments Committee questioned the discrepancies between Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) investigations and audit reports of parastatal books under the Ministry of Energy. The Committee was mulling over the gaps found by the DCI in the financial operations of these parastatals despite getting high scores from auditor analysis.
“The Public Investment Committee (PIC) questioned the audit reports on Kenya Power Company, Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen), Geothermal Development Company (GDC), Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco) and National Oil Corporation of Kenya.” According reports by the Standard Newspaper.
The Chairman of the Committee Abdulswamad Nassir said these concerns have been forwarded to the DCI head George Kinoti to have investigations carried out on a possible conspiracy between the parastatals and the auditing firms.
“It is suspicious that all these state corporations audited by the private firms are always given a clean bill of health every successive year yet those audited by the Auditor General have issues flagged down against them,” he added.
“We want the DCI to look into how these audit processes are conducted because it cannot be that barely after a parastatal is audited and cleared, investigators unearth criminal activities in their operations and take top management to court as was the case with Kenya Power.”
Suspicious Audits
Nassir gave an example of Kenya Power which despite getting a clean auditing report the top executives were arrested and taken to court over corruption allegations.
The office of the Auditor-General is responsible for auditing government entities and has often dug up financial irregularities in these institutions.
The concerns by the Committee come at a time when the Kenyan government is fighting corruption in the country, with President Kenyatta proposing to increase funds for fighting the vice in the Finance Bill 2018.
Parliament is expected to vote for or against the President’s memorandum today with regards to this Bill.
