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EACC detectives arrest Taita Taveta clerk over Sh17 million graft claims

Taita Taveta County Assembly Clerk Gadiel Maganga. (Handout)

By Mary Wambui | 26 Apr 2024

The clerk faces graft charges alongside the Deputy Speaker Mwadime Chao who has since denied the charges in court.

The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) on Friday arrested Taita Taveta County Assembly Clerk Gadiel Maganga over fraudulent expenditure incurred during a bonding trip by 21 MCAs to Zanzibar in 2022.

The anti-graft agency in a statement said the suspect will be processed at its Mombasa regional offices before being arraigned.

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The clerk faces graft charges alongside the Deputy Speaker Mwadime Chao who has since denied the charges in court.

EACC said its probe established that a total of Sh17 million was spent on the trip out of which Sh9 million was directly paid to the organisers for logistics while Sh8 million was paid as imprest to 30 officials, including the 21 MCAs.

"The officials were overpaid while some of those who received allowances did not travel. The County Assembly used forged documents to account for the fraudulent expenditure," the commission added.

To prevent his arrest, the clerk on Thursday moved to the High Court in Voi seeking conservatory orders to stop his arrest and prosecution in the case.

Justice George Dulu, however, declined to issue the orders, paving the way for the clerk's prosecution.

On Thursday, EACC's Director of Field Services and Coordination Jackson Mue noted that increasingly, officials suspected of engaging in graft are rushing to court to obtain conservatory orders to prevent their arrest, a trend that is undermining the fight against corruption in the country.

"In such cases, you will see somebody is a governor in Malindi, where he is charged. Maybe the investigators went to Malindi to question them but then you hear he went to Migori to obtain a court order. What does that tell you?" posed former Chief Justice David Maraga, after a media workshop at a Nairobi hotel.

The commission sought to absolve itself from claims that its operations are targeted to favour the government of the day.

"When you arrest a policeman, there's a famous Twitter handler who will say these guys just go for small fishes and petty cases, when we go for politicians, mmetumwa (you have been sent); when you arrest someone in government you have been paid by the opposition, when you arrest someone from the opposition you have been bought by the government," EACC CEO Twalib Mbarak said.