Listen to This Article Enhance your reading experience by listening to this article.

A Senate Committee has put to task two officials of the Unclaimed Financial Assets Authority (UFAA) over allegations of misuse of more than Sh10 billion worth of Kenyans’ unclaimed assets.

This is after nominated Senator Gloria Orwoba sought a statement about the alleged misuse of over Sh10 billion of uncollected funds as unaccounted for by the agency.

The Senate Finance and Budget Committee chaired by Mandera lawmaker Ali Roba, questioned UFAA’s Chief Executive Officer John Mwangi and the Board of Director’s chairperson Dr Francis Kigo to explain an alleged misuse of Sh10 billion worth of unclaimed assets.

Orwoba had claimed that billions of shillings worth of unclaimed assets surrendered to UFAA by various institutions had been misappropriated.

Idle cash

The assets include idle cash, shares and dividends, which have been left behind by deceased persons with financial and other institutions.

“There are discrepancies between what is declared by the institutions and what ends up at UFAA. These are the gaps that we must investigate,” said Orwoba.

According to Orwoba, there is a collision between UFAA and banking officials, adding that there is a case of New Fortis Sacco which allegedly had unclaimed assets worth Sh80 million but was suspiciously reduced to Sh848,000.

Orwoba also cited another entity for which she withheld its name as there is a live court case, whose unclaimed assets were Sh200 million but also got reduced to below Sh1 million.

In her statement, Orwoba wanted the Senate Finance and Budget Committee to establish the total amount of funds that have been remitted to the UFAA over the last five years as well as investigate discrepancies regarding unclaimed funds amounting to Sh10 billion.

The MP wanted the committee to establish why UFAA incurred expenses of over Sh500 million for substandard audit services undertaken, stating the procedure used to procure the services of the audit firms and the role played by the UFAA management in supervising the audits.

In March, the Authority said it currently holds Sh63 billion worth of unclaimed assets and have unified Sh2 billion and are on course to look for the owners of the assets.

In her statement, the vocal nominated lawmaker claimed that some over Sh1 billion unclaimed assets have suddenly found their owners who have claimed them yet the agency has no data corresponding to the claims.

“The account owners claimed their assets yet there are no supporting documents in terms of how the process was done,” she said. The accusations follow years of rising concerns over the reunification of the assets with their rightful beneficiaries.

She accused the agency of being in the process of securing a new system allegedly to erase records of all pertinent questions raised.