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| Governor Wa-Iria. |
Murang's Governor Mwangi Wa-Iria has been arrested over Mariira Farm Scandal by the EACC detectives.
According to reports, Wa-Iria was headed to Jubilee headquarters to drop his nomination papers when the hawk-eyed detectives arrested him and bundled him to their car at around 7.15am.
It is not clear where they took Wa-Iria but according to a post on his Facebook page Wa-Iria could have been taken to Integrity Centre.
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| Photo/A snapshot of Wa-Iria's Facebook post minutes after he was arrested. |
In December last year, an Auditor-General’s report revealed inflated purchases, questionable spending and huge disparities in financial statements in Murang'a County.
The county spent Sh57 million on a dairy-cow project that yielded only Sh4 million from the sale of animals, bull calves and milk.
According to Auditor-General Edward Ouko, the county had allocated Sh4 million to the Mariira Farm project, with each cow estimated to have cost the county over Sh250,000.
This resulted in a deficit of Sh52 million. The county purchased 184 cows and sold 80 cows to farmers at subsidised prices as revealed in the report.
“The policy was to sell the animals at subsidised costs to willing farmers which appeared unsustainable in the long run.The farm sold 81 cows, 20 died and 80 were left in the farm leaving three cows unaccounted for,” explained the auditor.
The report further shows how the county spent Sh3.5 million to build five fodder silos for Sh693,000 each but they have not been utilised.
“No reason was given for not utilising the silos which may lead to wastage of public funds,” noted Mr Ouko after site visit.
The auditor further accused the county of operating 38 bank accounts and failing to submit some of their account balances at the close of the financial year in question.
Out of these accounts, 36 had not been integrated with Ifmis and therefore the county could not post into the system transactions related to these accounts.
This includes Sh897,000 transferred to the accounts from which payments were made through manual cheques.
“Only 19 bank account balances maintained by the county were disclosed in the financial statements. No explanation was provided for not disclosing the other 19 bank accounts,” noted the auditor.
This is the fourth time Wa-Iria is getting arrested by the EACC over corruption allegations.
