Former National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich has been acquitted in the Sh. 63 billion Arror and Kimwarer dams scandal charges.
Mr. Rotich was acquitted with eight others after Justice Esther Nyutu rules that they had no case to answer. The court ruled that the evidence that had been presented in court was insufficient.
Mr. Rotich had been charged with nineteen counts. These included what the prosecution termed as unlawfully executing loan agreements for the construction of the Arror and Kimwarer dams.
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During the trial, the prosecution had declined to question 41 witnesses who had testified in the matter, with Justice Nyutu condemning the prosecution for their failure to cross examine the witnesses.
Mr. Rotich had been initially charged alongside current Central Bank of Kenya Governor Kamau Thugge. Thugge’s charges were however dropped by former Director of Public Prosecution Noordin Haji in 2021 after Thugge opted to be a State witness.
Rotich and Thugge had been arrested in 2020 alongside eight other top public officials over the dams’ scandal that saw taxpayers lose Sh. 21 billion paid out to a bankrupt Italian firm for the projects which never took off.
The government made advance payments of Sh. 19 billion, including the Sh. 11 billion in unnecessary debt insurance, which prosecutors said was shared out in accounts belonging to the conspirators and their agents.
“I was wrongly charged on matters that belonged in completely other Ministries and State departments and were very far away from the National Treasury,” Thugge had said when he appeared before the National Assembly’s Finance and Planning committee for vetting for the position of CBK Governor which he now occupies.
“The Director of Public Prosecution Noordin Haji looked at the charges and dropped them and made me a State witness.”
