This archive report was first published on 21 August 2019.
Published on August 21, 2019, a shocking scandal has emerged in Kenya's Energy Ministry, with allegations of serious theft of taxpayers' money engineered by top officials.
According to sources, an American contractor was hastily selected in March and paid Sh3 billion to help set up a petroleum agency that was not backed by law. The money, borrowed from the World Bank, was also intended to be used to develop a framework for the proposed UPRA.
However, the UPRA had earlier been proposed in the Petroleum Bill but was dropped in amendments by the National Assembly, with its intended functions handed to the successor of the Energy Regulation Commission.
Legislators have unearthed what they term as 'serious theft' of taxpayers' money engineered by the ministry's top officials. An American firm, Houston International Business Corporation (HIBC), was selected through single-sourcing on vague terms to carry out some unknown work to facilitate the payout, the legislators claimed.
Local partner for the US entity in the contract is yet to be unearthed as Petroleum Principal Secretary Andrew Kamau did not honour summons by Parliament, instead requesting to appear next Tuesday.
It is unclear what the purpose of the UPRA would be considering the existence of a parallel agency that provides policy and supervision of the energy and mining sector.
Developing regulations for the exploration and production of crude oil is expected to be a role of the Petroleum CS with input from the yet-to-be formed National Upstream Petroleum Advisory Committee.
Robert Pukose, the vice-chair of the Energy Committee in the National Assembly, termed the payouts as 'crazy figures' which could not be justified.
He added that the non-existent authority had already made huge payments with proceeds from a loan from the World Bank.
'It is all shrouded in mystery yet money has already been spent. This is pure theft,' Mr Pukose said, adding that the Directorate of Criminal Investigations will be called in to probe the matter.
