Kirinyaga Governor Anne Waiguru says the raid on her homes in Nairobi and Kerugoya by EACC detectives early Thursday was politically-motivated.
In a press statement Thursday afternoon, the embattled governor said the ambush was sponsored by someone who is out to scuttle her re-election bid. For a while now, Waiguru has been accusing Interior Principal Secretary Karanja Kibicho of being behind her political woes in Kirinyaga, including her June 9, 2020 impeachment by MCAs.
“Kenyans are not easily fooled, they can see right through this charade. They know who is behind it and they know why. It is about 2022 politics, period!” said the governor.
The CEO of EACC, Twalib Mbarak, Thursday morning stated that they had gotten a search warrant from the Nyeri Magistrate’s Court, which allowed the agency to storm Waiguru’s homes and look for crucial documents to assist in investigations into alleged misappropriation of Ksh23 million.
It is alleged that Waiguru and her juniors pocketed the money under the pretext that they had made foreign trips.
“EACC is in the process of establishing whether the trips were actually undertaken and whether the documents supporting disbursement of Ksh23 million to county officials were genuine,” said Mbarak.
Waiguru says she fails to understand how EACC arrived at the Ksh23 million figure, yet the MCAs had alleged -- in the lead up to her impeachment -- that the county boss and her cronies embezzled Ksh10.6 million.
“I wonder where they got the new figure from, considering the impeachment allegations and even their own interrogation of the same amount was Ksh10 million. Why do they see the need to shore up numbers?’ posed Waiguru.
The county chief says the dramatic manner in which EACC detectives raided her home at 5am Thursday was unnecessary because the documents they were looking for, could easily be made available without deploying “a battery of machine gun-toting officers”.
“Surely, you did not need a battery of machine gun-carrying policemen, raiding my home in darkness to get my cheque book! This could have been easily availed (sic) with a simple request.”
She adds that she has, previously, produced documents evidencing travel or refunds where no travel took place.
“The documents have been presented to the EACC,” said Waiguru, revealing that the statements included: relevant persons’ passports, imprest application documents, IFMIS print-outs, tickets for all trips taken, cancellation letters, deposit slips, personal bank statements and surrender documents.
“Most of those documents were also given to the Senate hearings on my impeachment,” she said.
The governor maintains that the EACC pursuit of her is motivated by 2022 politics.
“The inescapable conclusion is that this is not about investigating travel imprests, but a wider scheme to shape the 2022 succession politics of Mt. Kenya.”
Waiguru further said that the EACC was focusing its energies on small issues instead of going for the big corrupt individuals and corporates in Kenya.
“We hope that in the next few days, we shall see EACC officers having the same energy to find out about the billions [of shillings] that are alleged to have been lost in various scandals the same way they have in the case of my travel imprests. We look forward to seeing homes and offices raided,” she said.
