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Senators are investigating the expenditure of Ksh654 million by Uasin Gishu County Government in the 2022/23 Financial Year.

Already, the County Public Accounts Committee has directed Uasin Gishu Governor Jonathan Bii to submit a schedule detailing how the county spent Ksh654 million of the revenue it received in the 2022/23 Financial Year.

According to revelations by the committee, the county received Ksh9.3 billion during the financial year but the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) indicate that the county’s transactions totalled Ksh9.9 billion, translating to a disparity of Ksh654 million.

“You need to provide a schedule detailing how the Ksh654 million was spent,” the County Public Accounts Committee chairperson Senator Moses Kajwang directed when the governor appeared before the Committee to respond to queries raised by the auditor general.

“Failure to do so, we shall leave this committee with no option but to conclude that the funds have been stolen.”

The committee reveals that the governor failed to explain the huge disparity between the two entries, even failing to submit a reconciliation statement to indicate how the money was spent.

According to Governor Bii, the anomaly was a carry-over from the 2019/2020 Financial Year, a period when he was not in office.

Bii also claimed that his administration has carried out a reconciliation of all historical debts which will be captured in the report of the financial statements for the 2024/25 Financial Year.

The committee also queried the governor on how his administration paid a law firm Ksh6.2 million for representing the county in a mediation process whose total value was Ksh40 million.

The committee says that this was against the Advocates Remuneration Order, in which an advocate is entitled to charge an instruction fee which is based on the value of the subject matter, a fee for getting up and preparing for trial which is one-quarter of the instruction fees, a fee for preparing court documents which is chargeable per page and a fee for perusing correspondence.