Election chiefs in first ‘Chikengate’ bribes defence

Members of the defunct electoral team implicated in the Chickengate scandal have come out fighting, insisting they did not receive bribes to award tenders to British printing firm Smith & Ouzman.

Nine members of the Interim Independent Electoral Commission of Kenya (IIEC) say the local representative of Smith & Ouzman used their names to extort the British company but never remitted any monies to them.

The IIEC commissioners, including chairman Ahmed Issack Hassan, argue that Trevy James Oyombra, the S&O agent who negotiated and received a total of Sh52 million in bribes codenamed ‘chicken’ did not make any payments to the electoral officials.

“It is clear to us that the agent (Oyombra) was involved in an exercise of namedropping, puffing and flaunting to increase his commission,” the IIEC members said in a statement.

“We have invited the investigators to check our telephone and email communication to verify whether he communicated with any of us. We have also invited them to check our bank accounts to see whether the agent transferred any money to any of us,” added the unsigned statement.

The notice was prepared by Marende and Nyaundi Associates and is set to run in today’s press. This marks the first time members of IIEC are commenting on the scandal.

The IIEC had nine members including two  who sit in the current electoral body, IEBC – Mr Hassan – (chairperson) and Yusuf Nzibo, a commissioner.

Others who served in the IIEC at the time the bribes were paid out include Davis Chirchir (recently sacked from the Cabinet), Simiyu Abuid Wasike, Winnie Guchu, Douglas Mwashigadi, Hamara Ibrahim Adan, Tiyah Galgalo and Ken Nyaundi whose law firm prepared the statement.

The IIEC officials inflated the price of each of the 14.51 million referendum ballot papers ordered in 2010 at the rate of Sh0.75 per ballot paper, translating to kickbacks totalling £105,193.82 (Sh14.8 million), court papers filed in London show.

“The corrupt payments were built into S&O’s price for printing the materials so that the inflation in the price as a result of that corruption was passed onto those funding the institutions which contracted with S&O,” court filings show.

READ: How UK unearthed Kenya's 'Chickengate' scandal

The IIEC statement comes at a time when its successor, IEBC, is battling credibility and integrity issues liked to chickengate and the handling of the 2013 General Election.

Six out every 10 Kenyans or 58 per cent of the population want the current crop of IEBC commissioners removed, according to the latest poll by research firm Ipsos.

Allegations that top officials at the electoral body pocketed bribes has eroded Kenyans’ trust and confidence in IEBC — which was able to register a paltry 0.8 million new voters as at March 6 out of a target of 3.1 million — reflecting widespread apathy.

Kenya’s anti-graft agency has been pussyfooting around the so-called ‘chickengate’ scandal and is yet to nail any of the local suspects — more than a year after British authorities jailed and seized assets of the Smith & Ouzman executives convicted of bribing Kenyan electoral and examination officials.

London’s Southwark Crown Court on January 8, seized the assets of Smith & Ouzman Ltd and ordered the British printer to pay £2.39 million (Sh350 million) in fines and penalties for bribing Kenyan public officials.

Judge Daniel Pearce-Higgins had earlier in February last year sentenced Nicholas Smith to three years in jail while his father, 72-year old Christopher Smith, was handed a suspended jail term of 18 months and 250 hours of community service.