Damning details have emerged of how top officials at the Department of wildlife spent Sh30 million through fictitious travel reimbursements in less than a year in office.
Top on the list of those under probe by various agencies is Wildlife Principal Secretary Sylvia Museiya Kihoro and her staff.
Officials say this prompted looting from victims of Human Wildlife Conflict as well as taxpayers through imprests for falsified foreign trips.
On July 1, 2023, the PS released Sh908 million out of the Sh1 billion allocated for Human-Wildlife Conflict Funds to compensate victims of human-wildlife conflict across the country.
It is now emerging that the fund’s remaining Sh92 million was claimed by the PS for her numerous undated foreign trips and unexplained expenses backed by falsified documents.
Documents in our possession reveal the following glaring and daring details of the astronomical amounts officials claimed using Human Wildlife Conflict funds.
For instance, the PS claims to have traveled to Bonn, Germany on February 26 – March 6, 2023.
For the said trip, she claimed per diem totaling Sh1,191,241.50, taxi recompense of Sh813,241.55 (EUR5,180) and personal expenditure of Sh699,300.
She also claimed a per diem of Sh1,927,650 for a supposed five-day trip to India to attend the launch of International Big Cats Alliance on April 7-12, 2023 despite her travel documents showing that she entered India on April 9 and exited on April 11, 2023.
She further claimed per diem of Sh2,111,544.25 for a supposed 7-day trip to Oxford, UK on March 26 – April 2, 2023 and claimed a further Sh197,120 as taxi reimbursement.
However, documents in our possession show that the PS left Nairobi for the UK but never attended the International Conference on Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence held on March 26 – April 1, 2023.
The PS a month later claimed a per diem payment of Sh950,515.20 from the State Department for Wildlife ostensibly for a trip to Bonn, Germany to attend the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) on June 6 – 15, 2023.
This is despite her visa showing she entered Germany via Frankfurt Airport on June 8, 2023 and left on June 11, 2023, meaning she was in Germany for only two nights.
Reimbursements made for May, 2023 are even more shocking and total Sh1,191,241.50 in per diem and Sh175,000 in taxi claims despite all supporting documents she provided being dated March, 2023, meaning she either made no such trips or she received double payments.
All the claims by the Wildlife PS in the five instances above total a whopping Sh5,962,960.40 withdrawn from the Human-Wildlife Conflict Funds, yet she was officially invited to only one of the five foreign events.
On September 22, 2023, Museiya issued a Purchase Order (PO) to Seyia Limited, a company she has interests in, to supply tents during the official launch of the said Human Wildlife Conflict Funds payment and paid the company Sh2,740,000, in a clear case of conflict of interest.
Documents also show that she directed officers from her finance and account’s department to withdraw a whopping Sh4,962,058.80 supposedly for a training event in Tanzania.
The office of Chief Administrative Secretary (CAS) was furnished with furniture worth Sh9,500,631, but upon inspection, the said furniture were found to be worth only Sh4,328,800.
Furthr, the department spent Sh10,638,400 on fuel to attend to official functions and claimed a reimbursement of the same amount from the HWC Fuel compensation Fund.
Documents also show that PS Museiya is operating an Off-Budgetary Account at Equity Bank that has a total of Sh16,300,000, monies that were supposed to be returned to Treasury at the close of the last financial year, with herself and the Chief Finance Officer (CFO) as the only signatories.
This not only goes against the National Treasury system but is also in violation of the Public Finance Management Act 2012.
Some staff at the department have petitioned various investigations agencies to look into the issues.
We were unable to get Museiya’s comment on the allegations. She promised to call back but she had not done so by the time of going to press.
