Auditor: State lost billions in BVR row

An IEBC clerk displays a camera during the Biometric Voter Registration exercise on November 20, 2012. FILE PHOTO | SALATON NJAU |

What you need to know:

  • Sh6.4 bn loan negotiated by Canadian parastatal.
  • IEBC officials accused of disregarding law and not accounting for cash from Treasury.

The French government was locked out of the procurement of BVR equipment before the 2013 General Election, lawmakers were told on Tuesday.

An Auditor-General’s report presented to the Public Accounts Committee also showed that the government-to-government deal between Kenya and Canada led to a loss of close to Sh3.9 billion in loans.

Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission officials also misused funds, the committee was told.

Sh1.3 billion was unnecessarily spent by the IEBC to procure 15,000 additional laptops for use in electronic voter registration.

The commission discounted advice of its ICT director that a similar number of laptops procured for BVR kits could be configured with 3G technology to serve the same purpose.

The report says France had expressed interest, through French firm Safran Morpho, which bid to supply 9,750 BVR kits at Sh4 billion, but was reportedly told it was unsuccessful because the Canadian government had already been engaged.

“First secretary of the Canadian High Commission Tim Colby attended a meeting chaired by the IEBC chairman when the country that was to supply the BVR had not been identified,” a forensic auditor who appeared before the committee said.

OVERRULED DECISIONS

The report also implicates former IEBC CEO James Oswago who overruled the decisions of two tender and an evaluation and re-evaluation committee, and cancelled the competitive tendering which had attracted 29 bidders.

The decision resulted in the government-to-government tender, which ended up being more expensive through loan interests and other charges.

The government borrowed Sh6.4 billion from Standard Chartered Bank of London to buy 15,000 kits.

Because of the delay in procurement the government bought 15,000 kits instead at Sh6.4 billion instead of 9,750 kits at Sh4 billion.

The audit also revealed that the National Treasury released Sh192 million more than the amount required for the kits to IEBC but the money was not accounted for.

Although the contract was government-to-government, a Canadian parastatal, Canadian Commercial Corporation and the Export Development Corporation were in charge of negotiating for the loan on behalf of Kenya Government, from the UK bank.