Controller of Budget flags City Hall's Sh1.4bn planned payment to law firms
Controller of Budget Margaret Nyakang’o.
Controller of Budget (CoB) Margaret Nyakang'o has raised questions over the Sh1.4 billion planned payment by the Nairobi City County government to 19 law firms as pending bills.
The Sh1.4 billion was part of the Sh2.1 billion that the county government requested from the National Treasury on June 19, 2023, just days before the end of the 2022/23 financial year, to pay the law firms that provided legal services.
But in a letter seen by Nation.Africa and addressed to Nairobi City County Chief Executive Committee Member for Finance and Planning Charles Kerich, Ms Nyakang'o notes that the payment request from City Hall does not provide a timeline for the payment of the outstanding bills and is short on details of the payment.
“However, the county had not provided the pending bills payment plan which could enable the matching of individual payees to the requisition. Further, it is difficult to match the proposed payments with the pending bills report earlier presented to this office,” Ms Nyakang’o said in the letter.
Ms Nyakang'o also asked City Hall to provide details of the 19 law firms, including the status of each case handled by the firms and the judgments handed down by the courts.
Ms Nyakang'o's letter also said the payment request from City Hall did not include details of the invoices from the law firms.
“The schedule of 19 firms to be paid does not include the invoices' dates; therefore, it is difficult to ascertain whether they are pending bills or related to works done and invoiced in the current financial year. Please, therefore, revise the schedule to include the date of the invoices and attached copies of the payment vouchers for the 19 firms,” read the letter.
Within four months
The controversial payment plan comes after Mr Sakaja appointed a special committee in January to review the Sh21 billion in outstanding legal services bills and submit a report within four months.
The committee's mandate was extended by four months by Mr Sakaja through a gazette notification.
The 14-member committee, chaired by lawyer Kamotho Waiganjo and whose members include Law Society of Kenya president Eric Theuri, was to investigate the 300 law firms that have demanded Sh21 billion from the county.
Although the committee is yet to release its final report, a High Court suit filed by Rodney Wesonga & Mwangi Ngatia Advocates against Nairobi County accuses the county of rushing to make the payment without disclosing the criteria used to identify the firms.
In court documents, the aggrieved law firms accused the county of using a discriminatory process and selecting "politically connected" firms.
"The applicant is apprehensive that the respondent is carrying out and will pay out legal fees to ‘politically connected’ law firms, will discriminate against it, having cherry-picked on the firms to be paid without distributing the available budgeted money equitably across most of the firms that have pending bills," read the court documents.
Questions are also being asked about the motive behind the payment, which comes just days before the end of the financial year, and the fact that City Hall has prioritised the payment of outstanding legal bills to law firms, while other service providers are owed millions of shillings by City Hall.
