Court freezes Sh18m in Treasury officer’s graft case
Money launderers will try and take advantage of the election campaigns to move huge sums of money.
The anti-corruption watchdog has frozen the bank accounts of a junior finance officer at the National Treasury pending investigations on how she accumulated Sh18 million in less than three years on a Sh50,000 salary.
In temporary orders issued yesterday, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) was allowed to freeze Sh18 million cash balance belonging to Ms Tracy Njoki Kinge over suspicion that the money was fraudulently acquired.
The EACC intends to investigate and solve the puzzle of how the officer managed to multiply her salary 360 times between 2020 and May 2022.
It also intends to establish the source and purpose of the Sh18 million deposited in her bank accounts at Co-operative Bank and I&M Bank by the National Treasury and Planning. The payment was described as “extraneous and facilitation allowances”.
The 30-year-old woman works as a Finance Officer II. She joined the National Treasury in January 2020 from the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Cooperatives – State Department of Cooperatives, where she had worked since 2018.
Court papers filed by the EACC indicate that she earned a monthly salary of Sh50,954 between March 2020 and May 2022, which amounted to approximately Sh1.3 million during the period.
“She receives her salary through an account at Co-operative Bank (K) Limited. Besides the salary amount, she has inexplicably received numerous large sums of money between February 2020 and March 2022 amounting to Sh24.1 million,” said the EACC.
Court papers indicate that she opened an account at I&M Bank in February 2022 and in a span of five months, between February and June 2022, the account had received a total sum of Sh11.8 million.
“It was established that the Sh36 million is from her employer, the National Treasury and Planning, disguised as extraneous and facilitation allowances,” said the commission.
Preliminary investigations established that out of the Sh11.8 million received through her I&M bank account, a sum of Sh11 million was transferred to her fixed deposit accounts in the same bank while Sh498,000 was withdrawn in cash, leaving a balance of Sh400,000.
The investigations further established that out of Sh24 million received through her Cooperative Bank account, a sum of Sh4.6 million was used to buy Treasury bills, while Sh2.7 million is the balance in the account.
The officer last month used part of the funds to purchase Treasury bills worth Sh4.6 million and applied for Sh5 million worth of T-Bills with a one-year tenure “in a pool investment through Cooperative Bank and enjoyed a discounted interest of Sh377,729”.
“There is reasonable suspicion that the monies in Ms Kinge’s bank accounts held at I&M Bank and Cooperative Bank from the National Treasury and Planning are embezzled or misappropriated public funds,” said the EACC.
Justice Esther Maina allowed the commission to freeze the bank accounts of the officer for six months to allow completion of the investigations. The court prohibited her from accessing the money or the funds used for the purchase of the Treasury Bills.
