The Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Haji recommended the prosecution of Lugari MP Ayub Savula and his two wives, Melody Gatwiri Ringera and Hellen Kemboi over the Ksh2.5 billion scandal at the Government Advertising Agency (GAA).
Haji approved the prosecution of 30 firms and people after publishing their names on Saturday morning with former Broadcasting and Telecommunication Principal Secretary Sammy Itemere also named in the scandal.
Savula was arrested Friday evening and taken to the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI) headquarters for questioning over the scandal.
DCI Director George Kinoti confirmed that the legislator was arrested by his officers for conspiring to steal Ksh122,335,500 from the Ministry of Information Communications and Technology.
The DCI launched investigations in August after outraged media managers urged the DPP to take action on a debt of more than Ksh2.5 billion, which GAA failed to pay over years despite services already rendered.
GAA buys advertising space on behalf of government departments and agencies, collects payments, and is supposed to pay media firms but has not been remitting the funds.
When GAA was set-up in 2012, it was supposed to help the government cut down on advertising expenses.
However, some parastatals were reportedly complaining that their advertising costs had increased but they were not getting the kind of response they ordinarily did when they advertised directly.
This was attributed to GAA advertisements which are lumped together in the MyGov publication and inserted into newspapers, irrespective of reach and audience composition.
GAA was reportedly incurring a debt of Ksh40 million a week which amounts to Ksh2.08 billion a year on MyGov.
The current budget, the ministry only had access to Ksh390 million for paying media houses.
