An application to drop a Ksh. 30 million corruption case against former Kenya Pipeline Managing Director (MD) Charles Kiprotich Tanui and his co-accused has been denied by the Milimani High Court.
The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP), which had originally planned to call 25 witnesses, is badly hit by this development. ODPP declined to call the final witness, an EACC Investigating Officer, to the stand.
Later, the ODPP applied to have the case dismissed; however, the court denied it, directing that the case be heard through to completion.
This was the ODPP's second attempt to have the case dismissed, and both times the trial court rejected the application.
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Previously, the DPP was charged with summoning witnesses but failing to lead them, which resulted in the court clearing defendants due to insufficient evidence.
2020 saw the accusation of Tanui, Elias Maina-Karumi (former chief manager-technical), and Josphat Kipkoech Sirma (former chief electrical engineer), for allegedly violating procurement laws when they approved the payment of Euros 261,070 (Ksh. 31,987,584) to Redline Limited on February 18, 2014 for three autotransformers.
According to what the court heard, Karumi improperly granted Redline Limited an advantage by using his position to approve the payment of Euros 8,695 (Ksh. 1,065,354) on the same day.
Sirma was charged with signing a Material Arrival Advice Note/Inspection Report without the required legal authority, claiming it was a true certification that the work related to the tender that Redline Limited had been awarded had been completed.
The autotransformers were never installed, tested, or commissioned by the terms of the contract, according to the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), which had previously claimed that these payments to Redline Limited were made using fraudulent documentation.
