africanlive

[africanlive]

Sh4bn deal that spoilt Covid-19 party at Kemsa

A close childhood friend of Jubilee Party vice-chairman David Murathe registered Kilig Ltd on January 22 this year.

Mr William Willbroad Gachoka, who is also the brother of outspoken television personality Tony Gachoka, registered the company with a Chinese national, Mr Zhu Jinping. They each owned one share in the company.

At registration, the company had 1,000 nominal shares, which left it a lot of headroom to bring on board other shareholders. A few months later, the little-known company would be handpicked by the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Kemsa), and handed a Sh4 billion tender to supply 450,000 personal protective equipment (PPE) at Sh9,000 each.

Kilig was not on the list of thousands of pre-qualified companies with a history at Kemsa — it had no financial track record and no single PPE.

This would be the deal that spoilt the procurement party at the drugs agency, which would quickly escalate into a boardroom fight at the firm headquartered on Commercial Street in the capital city.

Indefensible

With this Kilig deal, Kemsa had exposed itself. It had broken all the rules, that even the suspended procurement boss, Charles Juma, said it was indefensible.

After it became apparent that Kilig would never be able to supply the tender, Kemsa cancelled it to save face.

It was too little, too late.

The anti-corruption detectives were already knocking on its doors and everyone would quickly rush into self-preservation mode.

And then names started coming out. Big election fundraisers had got some of the Covid-19 tenders, and had been paid. Connected businessmen fronted by the Health ministry had also received the Covid billions.