Former Kisumu Speaker Onyango Oloo charged afresh in Ksh.4B corruption scandal

Former Kisumu County Assembly speaker Onyango Oloo was on Wednesday charged afresh over the Ksh.4.1 billion Lake Basin Development Authority (LBDA) Mall scandal.

Oloo was charged alongside former Lake Basin Development Managing Director Peter Abuok and 12 others.

They were charged with engaging in a project without prior planning, willful failure to comply with the law relating to procurement, abuse of office among other charges.

Meanwhile, three accused persons in the case, Zhang Jing, John Zeyun Yang and Ederman Properties, have filed an application challenging the charge sheet.

The court directed that they serve the other parties on Wednesday.

The court was told that three accused persons in the case have engaged the National Treasury PS, the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Lake Basin Development Authority (LBDA) with the view of having the matter resolved out of court.

Oloo was impeached in September 2019 after being accused of abuse of office, unlawful suspension of MCAs and being linked to Lake Basin Mall scandal.

The Ethics and Anti-corruption Commission (EACC) began investigations into the scandal a complaint received in July 2015, that the cost of the LBDA mall had been inflated from Ksh2.5 billion to Ksh4.1 billion.

In 2019, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions said a lot of irregularities had been discovered following the investigation, including collusion between some Board members of the LBDA and Erdemann Properties Limited.

The directors of the company allegedly bribed Oloo with Ksh.17 million and other properties in order to inflate the cost of the project in the interest of the company.

George Omollo Odawa, a former chairman of the Finance and Establishment Committee of the LBDA, was also brought up for allegations of having received Ksh.12 million.

The LBDA management was further accused of awarding the contract for the construction of the mall to one of the three companies that had applied, even though neither was capacitated to carry through with the contract.