The Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Haji has ordered the arrest of Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich among other top government officials over the multibillion-shilling Arror and Kimwarer dams scandal.
Treasury CS Henry Rotich and his PS Kamau Thugge on Monday surrendered themselves to the Director of Criminal Investigations after DPP Noordin Haji called for their arrest over the Kimwarer and Arror dams scandal.
The two were picked by DCI detectives and taken to the headquarters on Kiambu Road.
Top government officials are said to have bent the rules, and misled the public about the state of national finances, in order to award the tender to the bankrupt Italian firm CMC Di Ravenna.
The company was to finance the Arror and Kimwarer dams project but the Kerio Valley Development Authority (KVDA) and the National Treasury went ahead to spend Sh20.5 billion of taxpayers’ money on the ghost projects.
The contract signed between the KVDA and CMC Di Ravenna was to see the Italian firm dig into its own pockets to complete the projects, set up a power plant, transmission lines and other related infrastructure and recover its money by selling power to the government for an unspecified number of years before handing back the dams to the government.
Instead, the National Treasury shopped for expensive loans in Italy and spent Sh20.5 billion for which Cabinet approval was sought.
The dams were strongly opposed by the Kenya Forest Service (KFS), which owned the tracts of forest-covered land that was acquired for the ghost projects.
Rotich and Thugge are among the 28 people and entities implicated in the Sh21 billion scandal.
Those mentioned are accused of offences, including conspiracy to defraud and the abuse of office.
They are also accused of failure to comply with applicable procedures and guidelines relating to procurement.
Haji and DCI George Kinoti officers have been out of the country for two weeks probing the case.
