Nairobi County departments trade blame on Sh1.4bn legal fees
Nairobi City County Government office.
The county government’s controversial approval of a Sh1.4 billion legal fees payment has taken a new twist after County Attorney Lydia Kwamboka blamed the finance department for the move.
In a detailed submission to the Justice and Legal Affairs of Committee led by Mugumu-ini MCA Jared Akama, Ms Kwamboka said she had issued an advisory to the finance department to focus on paying law firms that are owed small amounts, only for it to do the opposite.
She indicated that she had prepared a list of law firms that were supposed to be paid depending on the available budget and advised that small firms that are owed a total of Sh60 million should be paid on a priority basis.
“We go through the legal files as the legal department and once we are satisfied that the file is good for payment and then looking at the budget that we have, we forward the file to finance for payment.
Mandate
“The files were forwarded to finance by the legal department. The mandate to decide which companies are to be paid is the legal department’s not finance. The finance department has usurped our powers to decide which companies should be paid,” Ms Kwamboka said.
She also submitted to the committee that some officers in the finance department were out to frustrate her and had acted against her advice by asking her juniors to forward files concerning payment of legal fees.
“A number of legal files were disappearing from our civil registry and taken to finance for processing of payment without our approval. When I realised this, I wrote a memo urging the department to write a request letter giving the reasons why they need the file,” she said.
“An officer in my department would be called and told to take that file to finance and according to me that is wrong because finance are not legal experts. We are the ones supposed to go through every legal file and approve the payment based on a criteria,” she added.
Ms Kwamboka also told the MCAs that the finance department had chosen to pay the law firms that are owed huge amounts while none of the firms she had recommended were paid.
Frustration
Mr Akama expressed frustration over the blame games by within the county executive. He indicated that Ms Kwamboka and Chief Finance Officer Asha Abdi will be summoned by the committee in the same sitting to explain the controversial payment.
The MCAs also demanded the tabling of a report by a 14-member committee appointed by Governor Johnson Sakaja to probe the legal fees pending bills worth Sh21 billion owed to several law firms.
Although the committee is yet to make the report public, City Hall had recommended the payment of Sh1.4 billion to a number of law firms.
