The Auditor General Nancy Gathungu has come out to expose counties with numerous bank accounts and explained why the Governors practice this culture.
While appearing before the Public Investments and Special Funds Committee, Gathungu explained that there are several counties operating hundreds of bank accounts used in resource mismanagement.
According to the Auditor General, over 1,000 county bank accounts are collectively operated in commercial banks which is against the law which recommends that counties to hold their funds in the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK).
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However, counties have gone over and beyond to open bank accounts with other banks and she proceeded to name three notorious counties operating the most accounts. The three are Bungoma County with 321, Migori County with 208, and Kwale with 165 accounts.
Explaining why the Governors operate numerous bank accounts, she alleged that governors use this method to camouflage and hide counties’ misappropriations or erase tracks of money transactions.
“First of all, you will lose track, you put money there sometimes you forget that there is money there and then you come and in some of my reports you will see there are re-allocations from this account to another account and it was set up for a fund.”
According to the controller of Budget, numerous bank accounts make the audit work harder and unnecessarily complex thus recommending lesser accounts with her number being less than three.
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“I think we should minimize bank accounts, we should have one or two expenditure accounts. We don’t need 300. My biggest problem concerning counties is that the law gives counties a blank check on how many funds they can establish.”