CS Balala faces arrest and prosecution over graft -

535

Tourism and Wildlife Cabinet Secretary Najib Balala is likely to be arrested and arraigned before an anti-corruption court in the next few days.

Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission detectives staged a raid on Balala homes on Tuesday and office on Wednesday even after he had received summons to record statements at Integrity Center following allegations of graft in his docket.

Balala allegedly received kickbacks from several multi-million shilling contracts awarded to event organising companies locally and overseas.

Yesterday, Balala was desperately trying to reach out to Deputy President William Ruto to intervene and have the cases stopped saying he was ready to refund the proceeds in an out of court settlement.

Today in his official Twitter feed CS Balala denied EACC had raised his home of office. Kenyan News Day had received a copy of the EACC summons on the besieged minister.

No raids have taken place at my house as claimed by The Standard Newspaper today, the journalist was aware prior to publishing the report of the same. My legal team is handling the matter.

— Najib Balala (@tunajibu) February 15, 2019

Balala has been on the radar of EACC for a while now.

In Nairobi, he allegedly conspired with Deputy President William Ruto to frustrate the upgrading of Bomas of Kenya so as to give themselves the chance to grab up to 10 acres of the land belonging to the state institution.

Bomas which falls under Balala docket has for years had plans to build a tourist resort complete with International Conference Centre but the project has been met with a lot of red tape and lack of budget.

The development comes against the backdrop of an unprecedented meeting chaired by the new cabinet coordinator Interior Matiang’i where local and international contractors were assembled at the Kenya School of Monetary Studies and openly to name corrupt officials who included three Cabinet Secretaries. Balala is understood to be one of them.

The conference with government contractors was intended to follow up the progress made in various projects by the national government.

Apart from select CSs and contractors, the conference at KSMS was attended by 19 principal secretaries, Attorney General Paul Kariuki, Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Haji, Director of Criminal Investigations George Kinoti, Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) CEO Twalib Mbarak and chief executives of State agencies under the infrastructural ministries.