How Kenyans have been paying up to 5 times cost of their power bills -KPLC Scam

One of the well-orchestrated scams in the history of Kenya's power is the bill manipulation scandal. 

Rogue Kenya Power staff created and gave rights to non-employees to access company systems to manipulate bills and engineer fraudulent tokens that led to the loss of hundreds of millions of shillings through a well-orchestrated scandal.

Kenya Power workers fitting transformers. PHOTO| NMG

According to Nation Media investigative reporting, the company with refunds to Kenyans what they paid for false tokens, the scam totals to Ksh. 1.3 Billion.

The fraudsters targeted both the prepaid and post-paid systems, which are both linked to the Integrated Customer Management System (inCMS) which was created by the Spanish company Indra Kenya in 1996 later upgraded and installed in 2017.

The new system had a module known as a One Time Charge (OTC) that could debit and carry forward money owed by a customer before they pay for the purpose of reconciliation of accounts, making it easy for the company’s accounting department to calculate revenues.

“He created a user known as Edgar Odhiambo Ojienda, who was not a Kenya Power staff in the active directory,” says the report. “Mr. Ojienda was an employee of Belken Agencies Masters, which was contracted by Kenya Power between 2014 and 2017 to design and maintain power lines.”

For an example of a compromised account.

If a customer’s account was due with Sh10,000, the OTC module would automatically debit Sh10,000 and then carry the balance forward so that once the customer paid the money owed would automatically drop to zero.

The cartel could either increase the amount through that system it reduces the bill.

Me. Ojienda covered South Nyanza and the Rift Valley, Mr. Gordon Okwach, who CCTV identified as a commoner around Stima Plaza in Parklands, covered Nairobi and the western region was covered by Ms. Christabel Akech, who also recruited another person, only identified so far as Judith.

Only Coast region did not have a representative of the cartels but KPLC officials could do the same to enrich themselves. 

The cartels who got a direct login authentication to the KPLC system could inflate the cost of bills where the balance is shared amongst themselves with the rogue KPLC officers.