Thursday, August 1, 2024 - The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is staring at a forensic audit after the discovery of a Ksh2.7 billion debt in legal fees.
Appearing before the National
Assembly's Public Accounts Committee (PAC), IEBC officials, led by the CEO
Marjan Hussein Marjan, struggled to explain how the fee accrued to billions.
Marjan noted that the commission
did not control the number of election petitions filed in various courts
countrywide.
He noted that the commission had
pre-qualified law firms but at times, it was forced to seek reinforcement at
different stages of court proceedings.
He revealed that after the 2022
General Elections, IEBC was facing 124 petitions, among them former Prime
Minister Raila Odinga's presidential petition challenging President William
Ruto’s win, which stretched their thin legal team.
He added that the Treasury
was set to allocate funding to cater for this but the money was never
disbursed.
"We relied on Article 22 of
the Constitution, anticipating funding from the exchequer. We couldn't simply
sit back while being sued and not defend ourselves," he explained.
During the session, the
committee, and the commission accrued this amount while defending itself in
different election petitions filed in the past 10 years.
However, the committee argued
that the fees were exaggerated and this may indicate that public funds were
misappropriated.
Committee chairperson Butere MP
Tindi Mwale emphasised that through investigations must be conducted to
determine whether the billions were put to good use.
Furthermore, the committee also
added that a probe should be conducted into the various legal
firms that represented the commission in the various election petitions.
The MPs claimed that some
officials may have been in cahoots with some legal firms and city lawyers to
defraud the public through exorbitant legal fees.
The Kenyan DAILY POST
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