Former KEBS MD In the case involving the unlawful taking of 20 million Kenyan shillings worth of sugar, Bernard Njiraini and seven others were released after posting a cash bond of 400,000.
On Monday, the former managing director of the Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs), Bernard Njiru Njiraini, together with seven other individuals, were brought before the law courts in Milimani to answer for the missing shipment of condemned sugar and its subsequent illicit sale.
This comes as a result of the Directorate of Public Prosecutions receiving the papers from the probes into the sugar fraud, in which officials from KEBS and the Kenya Revenue Authority, amongst other government institutions, were involved.
To make room for intelligence into the unauthorised distribution of the condemned sugar, the head of the Civil Service, Felix Koskei, revealed on Wednesday of the previous week that 27 employees had been suspended from Kebs, KRA, the National Police Service (NPS), the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), and the Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA).
Njiraini, Dr Geoffrey Muriira (Director of Quality Assurance and Inspection), Hilda Keror (Manager of Inspection, Mombasa Port Office), Liston Lagat (Assistant Manager, ICDN Nairobi), Stephen Owuor (Principal Officer), and Peter Olima Joseph (Inspector, Mombasa) are among the Kebs employees who have been placed on administrative leave as a result of their involvement in the scandal.
Joseph Kaguru, Mwanja Masinde, Stephen Muiruri, Moses Okoth, Doris Mutembei, Chacha Hondo, Carol Nyagechi, and Derick Kago are some of the people in KRA who have been impacted by this situation.
Oscar Kai and Patrick Magut were the two officials working for the AFA.
Additional individuals from the law enforcement agencies who served as part of an inter-agency team that carried out the sugar and also received suspensions include Joseph Maita Mweni (Port Health) and Isackop Bonai (Nema), Stephen Cheruiyot (Anti-Counterfeiting Authority), Daniel Ngugi (KEPHIS), Willy Koskei (EACC), and Edwin Ruto (KPA).
The sugar, which consisted of 20,000 bags of sugar, each weighing 50 kilogrammes, had been brought into the nation in 2018, but it was rejected by the KEB since it did not have an expiration date on it. After that, the agency issued an order requiring the owner to pay to have them either re-shipped or destroyed.
Despite this, “in fulfilment of its statutory mandate, the Kebs National Standards Council approved the destruction of the consignment by conversion of the consignment for industrial ethanol use,” Koskei stated in a statement that was released a week ago.