On the last day of September 2021, the High Court sentenced to 27 years in jail the key suspect in the Ksh180 million Youth Fund scandal.
The High Court sitting in Nairobi found Mukuria Ngamau, the Managing Director of Quorandum Company Limited, guilty of five counts of conspiracy to commit an economic crime, unlawful acquisition of public property and making false documents.
However, as much as the conviction of Ngamau is a step in the right direction, he was not the only suspect or mastermind in the scandal that saw the taxpayer lose millions of shillings.
Ngamau was charged alongside other suspects in the scandal, but the names have since gone cold. Among those linked to the loss included the former Youth Enterprise Development Fund boss Catherine Namuye, her lawyer Eva Achieng Ayiera and Youth Fund driver, Simon Mwangi Gathika.
The three have since died with many questions remaining unanswered.
Simon Mwangi Gathika, the 33-year-old driver, was found dead in a Mombasa swimming pool on October 19, 2015.
Mwangi was participating in a swimming competition where he had emerged as the best swimmer among a group of merrymakers.
At the time of his death, the Youth Fund was under investigation by the Public Investments Committee (PIC) of the National Assembly and the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC).
The Fund's CEO at the time, Catherine Namuye, had been suspended over authorization of the irregular withdrawal of Ksh180 million from the Fund’s bank account.
According to a Sunday Standard report dated March 20, 2016, a private investigator commissioned by the Fund’s secretariat shed light on the death of Mwangi, who used to interact with the Fund’s managers and directors.
Mwangi was in the company of powerful politicians and businesspeople on the night of his death. His boss at the Fund, Catherine Namuye, would later pass on in 2017.
Namuye collapsed and died at her home in Nairobi's Kileleshwa estate. Her body was discovered in her apartment in the morning after screams were heard from the house. This is according to police and neighbours reports recorded at the time.
Medics who attended to her did not record any physical injuries on her body.
In 2016, Namuye was accused and charged with 12 counts of corruption in relation to the loss of the Ksh180 million.
When she appeared before PIC, she was keen to save her job and avoid becoming part of the statistics of jinxed CEOs of the YEDF that was formed with the sole purpose of reducing unemployment among the youth.
An emotional Namuye claimed that then YEDF board chairman, Bruce Odhiambo, forced her to pay Quorandum Ltd Ksh180 Million for a contract to develop a suspect Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) strategy.
On October 10, 2017, her lawyer, Eva Achieng Ayiera, was found dead in her bedroom in the same Kileleshwa neighbourhood. Her body was discovered by her house help.
A caretaker of the apartment told police that Ayiera returned on Saturday morning from a foreign trip and that it was not clear how long she had been dead.
She lived with the house help but had given her a few days off upon her return from Sierra Leone. The caretaker stated that the house help was to return on a Monday.
He added that the lawyer stayed indoors until around 5pm on the day of her arrival and stepped out of the compound with her baby and returned later.
In January 2019, former Youth Fund boss, Bruce Odhiambo, passed on. Odhiambo died while undergoing treatment at a city hospital after he suffered a heart attack. He was an accomplished music producer at Johari Clef.
President Uhuru Kenyatta had sacked Odhiambo, who was then Chairman of the Fund, following the scandal.
In a letter to the Public Investment Committee signed by Head of Public Service, Joseph Kinyua, Kenyatta sacked Odhiambo together with seven other members of the board.
Odhiambo admitted before a Parliamentary Committee that he acted unilaterally in appointing Namuye as the sole signatory to the bank account that held Ksh400 million.
PIC heard that senior YEDF officials colluded with a top bank to defraud the agency through malicious activities and payment of non-existent services that led to the loss of Ksh400 million.
