Ronald Osumba Suspends 7 Senior Youth Fund Officials

Youth Enterprise Fund Chairman Ronald Osumba on Monday sent seven senior officials on suspensions following suspicions of fraud.

An audit report tabled on March 2 indicated that the seven may have had a hand in disbursing government loans irregularly.

Mr Osumba noted that the Board had agreed to suspend the officials to safeguard the use of public resources and avoid the further misappropriation of the funds.

"We have also undertaken wide-ranging staff changes across the entire organisation particularly the finance and credit departments and invited the National Treasury to carry out a special and independent audit to determine the extent of the problem," he added.

[caption caption="Youth Fund Chairman Ronald Osumba during a past project "][/caption]

The top officials suspended include the lending and investment manager and the senior accountant.

Mr Osumba also explained that the Board had noticed the irregularities after they commissioned a process of migrating the fund's data to an ERP system.

"The Board was notified on February 6 and consequently commissioned a special internal audit on the matter," he noted.

He added that the suspect officials may have taken advantage of the exercise to alter loan beneficiary details leading to the scandal.

The Board also enlisted investigators from the Department of Criminal Investigations (DCI) to look into the recipients of the irregularly disbursed funds to determine whether they may have any criminal liability.

Earlier in the year, Mr Osumba conveyed that the Fund would seek to increase the amount disbursed by the government initiative to Sh1 Billion compared to Sh352 Million that was disbursed in the previous financial year.

[caption caption="File image of Osumba during a past event"][/caption]

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