The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) is scheduled to arraign over twenty Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) employees over a decade long multi-billion shilling grand theft at the oil company.
The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) has also forwarded its investigations files on same cases to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and is awaiting recommendations.
The investigations are related to diversion of adulterated fuel worth billions of shillings and procurements payments to fictitious companies that cannot be traced at the Registrar of Companies, and others with fake registration documents.
In the latest probe in which senior KPC managers have been being interrogated at the Kiambu road based DCI headquarters over the last one month, detectives have established that the government owned company lost billions of shillings in fraudulent transactions between unscrupulous businessmen and KPC managers.
DCI detectives have now compiled all evidence and are waiting for direction from the Office of the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) before arraigning the suspects in court.
Ongoing investigations have established that huge consignments of adulterated fuel, which is supposed to be transported by road from KPC depots around the country to the KPC depot in Mombasa, is diverted to the local market by the transporters but is recorded as having reached its Mombasa destination.
Product accountant Antipas Tirop who was suspended for failing to abide by laid-down procedures in allocating oil fuel to oil marketers is being sought by detectives or questioning. It is alleged that he manipulated oil marketers’ records leading to massive fuel loses at KPC.
Tirop resigned after his suspension following an internal KPC investigation.
Detectives are also hunting down former KPC employees who allegedly erased suspect transactions from the system in an attempt to avoid detection.
The deleted data has since been reconstructed by IT experts and will be used as evidence in the impending prosecution.
Over twenty KPC managers have been summoned to record statements at the DCI in the ongoing probe.
DCI has been investigating the eight companies involved in the multimillion-shilling procurement deals with KPC. The companies are associated with a family of an employee who has since been sacked.
The companies are Sealing and Seals Ltd, Thermo Dynamics General Supplies Ltd, Boiler and Petroleum Piping Systems Ltd, Aero Dispenser Valves Ltd, Trans Africa pipeline Engineering Company Ltd, Embridge Engineering Ltd, Nairobi General Supplies Ltd and Oilfields Engineering and Supplies Ltd.
One of the investigations revolves around the payment on 14th July 2017 of $1,873,864.47 (Sh187,386,400) into Vendor 0000103468, Oilfields Engineering And Supplies Ltd.’s National Bank of Kenya, Wilson Airport branch account number 01020111151700 for the supply of actuators.
Detectives says…
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