Abandoned equipment at Kipsaiya in Elgeyo Marakwet where Arror dam was to be built.
The very first misleading assertion you will come across on the first page of the loan contract and as you peruse the document is the claim that the borrowing emanates from an international tender by Kerio Valley Development Authority (KVDA) that was won by a joint venture formed out of Kenya by two Italian entities, namely CMC Di Ravenna and Itinera SPA.
The assertion is untrue in two respects. Look through the newspapers and you will find that the tender floated by KVDA was for a PPP project. KVDA invited a private party to design, finance, build and operate the dams under a concession contract.
The fact of the matter is that the government was not supposed to borrow money for the dams. What was advertised was a concession contract.
And, as born by the paper trail, the Italian party that won this bid was CMC Ravenna of South Africa. The joint venture by the Italians, namely CMC di Ravenna-Itinera, came later and did not participate in the KVDA contract.
If anything, the paper trail shows that the award to CMC Ravenna South Africa expired as the Italians could not manage to reach financial close within eight months stipulated in an MoU it signed with KVDA after they were given acceptance letters.
The second misleading assertion in the agreement is the statement that the contracts and borrowing was related to a construction agreement signed between KVDA and the Italians on April 5, 2017.
The correct position is that this Di Ravenna-Itinera contract mentioned in the loan contract popped out of nowhere. This entity did not participate in the tender that was advertised, evaluated and awarded by KVDA on December 14 and that eventually lapsed.
What the masters of deception who negotiated and drew the loan agreements did was mischievously cite the reference number for the PPP deal that had aborted as a basis for signing a financing facility with the National Treasury.
The documentary evidence in the public domain shows irrefutably that the so-called Ravenna and Itinera joint venture contract of April 5, 2017, was neither evaluated nor procured by KVDA. On a clause-by-clause reading of the loan agreements, some of the inescapable conclusions you will arrive at are the following.
First, Kenya did not borrow billions from greedy European lenders to build Arror and Kimwarer dams. The contracts clearly show that the borrowing had no relations to the PPP tender that was procured and awarded by KVDA on December 2015 and which did not take off.
If anything, the contracts seen by The Weekly Review indicate that the money borrowed was purportedly for goods and services imported from Italy under an export contract as opposed to civil works and purchase of heavy machinery for building a dam.
