Investigators from the Israel Police last week detained for questioning four former senior managers at Shikun & Binui, on suspicion of having been involved in bribery of public officials in Kenya.
The Israeli construction group through its foreign subsidiary Solel Boneh International Holdings (SBI Holdings) was the company chosen to build the World Bank funded Mau Summit-Kericho-Kisumu Highway at a cost of Sh14 billion in 2010.
It was, however, accused of missing completion deadlines in upgrading the crucial link.
The company has been gunning for other construction projects in Kenya.
The arrest by Israeli authorities of former top officials of one the country’s largest construction groups for allegedly receiving bribes in Kenya in exchange for lucrative road contracts, has shifted the spotlight on procurement of mega State infrastructural projects.
Investigators from the Israel Police last week detained for questioning four former senior managers at Shikun & Binui, on suspicion of having been involved in bribery of public officials in Kenya.
The Israeli construction group through its foreign subsidiary Solel Boneh International Holdings (SBI Holdings) was the company chosen to build the World Bank funded Mau Summit-Kericho-Kisumu Highway at a cost of Sh14 billion in 2010. It was, however, accused of missing completion deadlines in upgrading the crucial link.
The company has been gunning for other construction projects in Kenya.
In 2014, speaking after inspecting the road construction progress, former Cabinet Secretary for Transport and Infrastructure Michael Kamau said SBI Mau Summit–Nyamasaria contract had reached defects liability—a set period of time after which a construction project is supposed to have been completed—and the government was at the time concerned by the slow pace it was taking to complete construction of the 56 kilometre road.
“The road construction has taken nearly three years and it’s yet to be completed. Only 30 kilometres have been tarmacked meaning that only 10 kilometres of the road was tarmacked per year. This also means that less than a kilometre was done in a month,” Kamau was quoted saying in 2013.
Among the four officials arrested is former chief Ofer Kotler.
Those arrested last week were in senior positions at Shikun & Binui until 2014. They were questioned for several hours.
They joined three suspects detained earlier on Tuesday in connection with the affair. The three are Yehuda Elimelech, who was chief executive of SBI, the Shikun & Binui unit active in Kenya; his replacement Rony Paluch, and a third person by name of Alexander Yashish. The suspects, however, deny the allegations.
The arrests whose investigations are expected to extend their tentacles into Kenya, are likely to see a section of current and former officials of the ministry investigated on the allegations.
“This is an international case involving suspicions of bribes given by a construction company that operates in Israel and overseas,” an Israeli police statement said. “It is suspected that the payments were made to enable construction projects in Africa worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”
The arrest turns the heat on those who served at the helm of the Transport and Infrastructure ministry at the time and whose dockets are mentioned, for allegations of presiding over corrupt practices contrary to the demands of good corporate governance and demands of public office.
Legal documents in past and ongoing cases have often shown how some rogue State employees manipulate the procurement law to inflate tender prices and line their pockets with huge sums of money in exchange for shady deals.
For instance, in 2014 a four-year investigation by the United Kingdom’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into allegations of British firms dishing out bribes codenamed ‘chicken’ to Kenyan officials to secure deals, unearthed a multi-million-shilling corruption scam where local election officials pocketed millions of shillings in bribes to award lucrative printing contracts over a two-year period.
In a legal battle that exposed one of the best documented international corruption networks in Kenya’s history, UK prosecutors filed in court loads of written evidence implicating senior election officials in the corruption ring.
The documents showed that the Kenyan taxpayer paid dearly for the illicit dealings between senior Smith & Ouzman (S&O) officials and the senior managers and commissioners in the defunct Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC), putting to shame Kenyan prosecutors and the anti-corruption agency officials who have yet to nail anyone for the offences.
In 2010, Kenyan government officials were at the centre of an investigation in the US involving Sh1.5 billion bribes allegedly paid by France telecommunications giant Alcatel-Lucent for the award of the country’s second mobile phone licence to the then Kencell 18 years ago.
In 2015, top Kenya government officials were on the spot once again for pocketing more than Sh138 million ($1.5 million) in bribes from a subsidiary of American tyre firm Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, US regulators said.
The bribes were paid in exchange for the award of multi-million shilling tenders to supply tyres to some of Kenya’s largest State corporations, government agencies and public listed firms.
