Economy

MPs probe how firm used airport land to get Sh510m loan

KAA

Kenya Airports Authority managing director Jonny Anderson. FILE PHOTO | NMG

A parliamentary committee  has resolved to summon the Treasury secretary, the National Land Commission and a commercial bank to explain how an airport land title was used by a private firm to secure a loan of Sh510 million.

The Public Investment Committee (PIC) said Standard Chartered Bank #ticker:SCBK will be required to appear before it to provide the legal authority it used to extend the loan to Transglobal Cargo Centre Limited.

PIC grilled the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) managing director Jonny Anderson over the lease agreement that it entered with Transglobal Cargo for use of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport land.

This is after Auditor-General Edward Ouko said in an audit of KAA that the logistics company, associated with billionaire businessman Peter Muthoka, secured the charge on airport land for a Sh510 million loan from the Standard Chartered Bank.

“We will summon the CS Treasury, NLC and Standard Chartered bank to know how Transglobal secured an I.R number which it used to secure the loan without the authority of the Treasury. We also want to know how the original lease of 20 years was extended to 40 years and latter 60 years,” PIC chairman Abdulswamad Nassir said.

READ: Prime airport land open to grabbers as title deeds missing

He said the committee wants to establish from NLC whether the I.R number had been used to acquire a title deed for the leased airport land.

PIC put Mr Anderson to task to name the persons who authorised the use of the lease to secure the bank loan and those behind the extension of the lease period from the original 20 years.

“I am not in a position to respond if the extension of the lease was approved by the board or not. But we can provide the name of the managing director and members of the tender committee who approved the 20 year lease to Transglobal,” Katherine Kisila, the KAA company secretary told MPs.

Transglobal Cargo Centre signed the 20-year lease agreement with Transglobal to operate freight services at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.