A Nandi County Procurement Officer committed suicide by hanging himself at his home in Kapngetuny location in Nandi County.
Mr Kevin Kemboi, who worked in the Department of Health and Sanitation and the Department of Lands and Natural resources, was found dangling from a nylon rope tied to the roof of the cowshed.
He left a suicide note addressed to his wife Joan Busieney citing ‘stress at his workplace’ as the reason for taking his own life.
Confirming the incident, Kapsabet OCPD Stephen Obara stated that police received a call from Kapngetuny location Chief Joseph Kogo who reported that the county official had committed suicide.
Obara stated that they were awaiting a postmortem and a forensic report to unravel the actual cause of his death.
“We got a call from the area chief at around 7 am on Sunday who reported Mr Kemboi had hanged himself,” Obara stated.
A day before Kemboi’s death, documents were leaked from the two procurement departments citing mass fleecing of county funds where hundreds of millions seemed to have been lost through illegal procurement procedures.
In the documents dated 4th September 2017 and signed by the deceased, Kemboi sought to absolve himself from blame in corruption schemes within the two departments stating that millions in county funds had been paid to several contractors without his approval.
Kemboi accused certain senior officials in the affected departments of sidelining him in the procurement process and forging his signatures to acknowledge receipt of undelivered supplies.
He also listed several suspicious tenders which he said were illegal but received payment.
The documents were addressed to the Head of Supply Chain management in the county and the Chief Officer (CO) in charge of the Lands and Environment department.
Nandi Lands, Environment and Natural Resources County Executive Member (CEC) Dr John Chumo regretted Kemboi's death but termed the leaked documents as ‘fabrications’ stating that he was not aware of any corrupt scheme in the Lands and Environment departments.
“We are however calling on all anti-graft and criminal investigations bodies to investigate the death in totality to shed light on the reasons behind the death,” Chumo stated.
