Disqualified presidential candidate Jimi Wanjigi has sensationally claimed that the public debt crisis facing the country was a fictional problem created by the Jubilee administration.
In a public statement on Sunday, July 24, the billionaire businessman claimed to have conducted the first forensic audit of Kenya's public debt and made the shocking findings in a report titled Kenya Public Debt Heist.
According to Wanjigi, the original sin was committed in 2014 when the Public Finance Act was amended. The changes by Parliament enabled the government to borrow and make exceptions to the Constitution which requires all money borrowed by the government to be processed through the Consolidated Fund (the government's primary account).
"The changes were unconstitutional because an Act of Parliament cannot supersede constitutional provisions. But the new law is extremely absurd as it made extremely amorphous exemptions in the PFM Act clauses c and d.
The Safina party boss added that his investigation into the government books found that only Ksh2 trillion in loans had been processed through Parliament.
"This is the government books and there is no creative accounting here, the records are released per month and you can check what Parliament has passed through appropriations bills. Despite the Ksh2 trillion loan that can be proven, the government claims to have Ksh6.1 trillion in external debt which would mean Ksh4 trillion of it is fake," Wanjigi stated.
To further complicate the situation, Wanjigi announced that he found no record of the domestic debt (money borrowed from banks through Bonds and Treasury Bills) in any appropriations bill which would mean the money had never been spent on any project.
"This means another Ksh2.9 trillion debt only exists in paper and has not been received into any government account," he added.
As per his submission, a total of Ksh6.9 trillion of money purported to be public debt could not be traced.
The plot further thickens, in terms of the government repaying public debt, Wanjigi claimed his audit found that Ksh 5.6 trillion of taxpayers had been approved by Parliament and spent on repaying Kenya's debt.
"As Kenyans, we are suffering for nothing, we have taken loans of Ksh2 trillion but our taxes are more than enough to cater for that because Ksh5.6 trillion has from 2014 gone towards repaying our debt. Prior to 2014, we had another Ksh2.3 trillion debt inherited from the Kibaki government.
If you add, the total debt ought to be Ksh4.3 trillion and if we have paid Ksh5.6 trillion of it, we should have an excess in our accounts. The truth is that at the moment, not only is the Ksh8.5 trillion figure released by the government fake, there is Ksh1.3 trillion of taxpayers' money that is missing. This is a Ksh10 trillion heist."
His presentation included props borrowed from the famous Spanish Netflix series - Money Heist.
The businessman promised to name individuals who had allegedly benefited from the loan repayment for services and projects that did not exist. He added that his report corroborated President Uhuru Kenyatta's statement that Ksh2 billion is stolen on a daily basis.
Kenyans.co.ke could not independently verify the allegations made by the Safina party boss.
