EACC’s bid to bait police officer suspected of graft backfires

A ploy by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) to lay bait on a senior detective in Nyeri suspected of corruption charges has backfired, instead turning into a major attempted bribery bust for the police.

EACC has now found itself at loggerheads with the police yet again over its application of unconventional tactics to entrap officers over corruption suspicion.

In the Mathira case, a suspected land fraudster found himself caught up in the institutional wars between the two investigative agencies.

A cash amount of Sh150,000 is also at the centre of the dramatic dispute, with both EACC and the police claiming it is an exhibit in corruption cases.

The anti-corruption agency claims it is investigating claims of bribery demands by a senior police officer and wants the money back as it was “treated”.

On the other hand, the police maintain that they are investigating attempted bribery against an EACC ‘bait’ and are holding the money as evidence.

Fraud probe

According to police records, Mr John Kinyua has been under investigations for land related fraud. Police records acquired by the Nation allege that he was trying to compromise the investigation and wanted to bribe his way out of the matter.

“One John Kinyua is an accused in a case under investigation of acquiring a title deed in order to defraud a parcel of land belonging to his uncle,” the police report reads.

Mr Kinyua reportedly visited Mathira West deputy sub-county DCI boss Obed Mulunga in his office in Kiamachimbi on Wednesday afternoon with the intention to bribe him to kill the case against him.

Mr Mulunga was in the company of two other officers from Karatina Police Station and the accused allegedly requested to see the DCI boss privately.

“The two officers then left for Karatina where they reside. Immediately they left, John Kinyua stood up and told Mr Mulunga that he had come with Sh200,000 to be assisted not to be taken to court for the above case,” the police report further says.

Bait arrested

The DCI boss would then call back the two officers as soon as the offer was made, and Mr Kinyua was arrested for the offence of attempting to bribe a state officer. The officers also recovered Sh150,000 in cash from the suspect.

But wait; there is more.

The Nation has since learned that the story goes deeper than the police report says, and that a bigger mission was in motion.

EACC has come out to admit that they had baited the civilian in an attempt to catch the senior officer red-handed receiving a bribe.

It backfired.

Central Regional EACC boss Charles Rasugu told the Nation that Mr Kinyua had reported to them that the officer had demanded a Sh200,000 bribe so as to bury the fraud case against him.

“We were investigating a case where a DCI officer for Mathira West was demanding for a bribe to assist the complainant not to be charged in court. We were in the process of investigations where we intended to arrest the officer taking the money,” Mr Rasugu said.

But in an interesting turn of events, the police boss somehow got wind of EACC’s plot and counter-planned, in turn arresting the anti-corruption agency’s bait.

Posing as civilians

The EACC detectives had been posing as civilians who had gone to report another land case. When the moment came for them to pounce on the DCI boss, he was already strides ahead of them, and had arrested their bait.

In fact, at some point, the detective tried to have on record the very EACC officers — who were meant to arrest him — as witnesses to the attempted bribery case.

“As the inventory was being prepared, the two witnesses were asked to produce their IDs so as to be used in the inventory and it [was then that] one of them said they were officers. They refused to produce their IDs and made calls where other people came and claimed they were colleagues from EACC Nyeri,” the police report stated.

EACC now maintains the DCI boss is still under investigations for demanding a bribe. On the other hand, police have launched investigations against the EACC bait for attempting to bribe the police boss.

[email protected]