Kitui County Assembly Speaker Kelvin Kinengo Kinengo.
Kitui County Assembly Speaker Kelvin Kinengo has been detained for two weeks by Dubai authorities over an alleged unpaid debt of Sh8.9 million owed to the county.
Mr Kinengo, who was in Dubai on official assembly business, was barred from returning to Kenya on Wednesday evening, July 10, after police at Dubai International Airport enforced a court-ordered travel ban on top Kitui County officials.
The Speaker had to remain in Dubai for fifteen days until Thursday, July 25, when he was allowed to travel after county officials back home worked frantically to settle the lawsuit and get the embargo lifted.
The travel ban came after a Dubai-based consultancy firm involved in organising Dubai Expo 2021 for the county went to a UAE Federal Court in 2021 and successfully obtained an injunction and further orders to detain top county officials passing through Dubai until the debt was fully paid.
The consultancy firm - TBLDC Group - claimed in court papers seen by Nation.Africa that Kitui County had hired them to organise the participation of former governor Charity Ngilu and a delegation of 15 officials at the Dubai Expo 2021, which ran from October 17 to 26 this year.
County Solicitor Timothy Mwange declined to discuss the matter, but interviews with several officials, who requested anonymity due to the political heat generated by the issue, confirmed that the case wasn't being defended at all, despite the legal department receiving numerous court summonses to virtually attend the Dubai court hearings.
"The county attorney's office actually received the suit papers written in Arabic, but failed to get them translated into English and understand the basis of the court case," said a senior official familiar with the matter.
The company claimed in court that it had paid registration fees to attend the Dubai Expo, hotel reservations, airport transfers and other services for the Kitui delegation to the tune of US$55,000, only for the county government to cancel their participation on the day the trade symposium began.
This amounted to about Sh6 million at the average dollar exchange rate for 2021 of Sh109.6 to the Kenyan shilling.
Governor Ngilu's 16-member delegation to the nine-day Dubai Expo, which they did not attend, included the then Speaker of the Assembly George Ndotto, two members of the County Executive Committee, two chief officers and nine members of the County Assembly.
The Dubai court awarded the company the undisputed claim and legal costs, with interest at 10 per cent per month. The county ended up paying US$67,000 or Sh8.94 million.
After the court ruling, the consultancy went further and obtained a travel ban for the governor, his deputy, the County Finance Minister and the speaker of the county assembly.
The travel ban meant that any of the four top county officials would be arrested and detained if they set foot on Dubai soil, either visiting or travelling to other destinations, until the claim was fully settled.
On this basis, Mr Kinengo unwittingly walked into the trap that had been laid long before he took office in 2023.
When he arrived at the airport to catch his flight back to Nairobi, the airport authorities told him they could not allow him to travel because of a red alert and referred him to the local courts.
Mr Kinengo had been in Dubai for a week with members of the County Assembly Service Board, who were allowed to board their Emirates flight back home.
In an interview with Nation.Africa, the youthful speaker recounted the ordeal of being detained in a foreign country for mistakes he knew nothing about. He had earlier spoken publicly on the issue during the annual Kitui Agricultural and Trade Fair at Ithookwe Showground.
He said that the following day, Thursday, he was taken to a local court where he was directed to a portal to access the details of the case, which were also in Arabic.
"I wasn't under arrest or in police custody in Dubai, I was free to go anywhere in the city but I couldn't leave the country as my details had been circulated at all exit points," Mr Kinengo said, adding that the travel ban could only be lifted by the plaintiff after he had paid his dues.
Mr Kinengo, a lawyer by profession, said it wasn't easy to find out why he had been banned because there are only four official working days in the UAE, which run from Sunday to Thursday.
"I contacted Governor Julius Malombe and informed him of my predicament and he quickly convened an emergency cabinet meeting to find a solution," he explained, adding that he was only allowed to board a rescheduled flight to Nairobi after the county paid the claim and the Dubai courts lifted the embargo.
Contacted for comment, however, Zakayo Kimanzi, who served as county secretary under Governor Ngilu, said the county had not made any commitment or signed any contract with the Dubai firm.
"I am aware of the case but the claim is illegitimate because we never issued a Local Purchase Order (LPO) to the Dubai firm, which is the only legal document that binds a county as a procuring entity into a formal contract," Mr Kimanzi said.
The former official said the Malombe administration should have defended the case when summoned by the Dubai courts and demanded to be shown proof of any contractual obligation.
It is not clear whether the county will appeal the case.
