In today’s court news, a businessman from Malindi, accused in a Ksh 19 million fraud case, told the court yesterday that he was wrongly implicated, claiming that the tender documents at the center of the case were submitted using his credentials while he was out of the country.
Katana Wanje, the proprietor of Multiserve Contractors, is facing charges alongside Wachu Omar Abdalla, Kennedy Otieno Onyango, Bernard Kai, and Margaret Faith Kalume. The prosecution alleges that the five conspired to defraud the government through the illegal payment of Ksh 19,007,539 to Multiserve Contractors for a tender issued by the National Government’s Malindi Constituency Development Fund.
Wanje, however, denied involvement in submitting the documents used to secure the contract for the construction of the Malindi Sub-County Education Office. He told the court that an employee submitted the bid on his behalf while he was abroad.
Through his lawyer, Duncan Osoro, Wanje stated that he was in Zanzibar at the time of the bidding and had entrusted his employee, Shadrack Orwa, to handle the submission process.
“It was my employee, Shadrack Orwa, who submitted the documents. I was in Zanzibar at the time, and we communicated remotely. I gave him the go-ahead, but I never had a chance to review the documents he eventually submitted,” Wanje told Mombasa Chief Magistrate Alex Ithuku.
The court was presented with an audit report by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations as part of the prosecution’s evidence. The report covers the year 2015, yet Multiserve Contractors was only registered in 2017—a discrepancy that Wanje highlighted in his defense.
The court has already ruled that the prosecution has established a case against the accused, who have now been put to their defence.
