Former assistant minister and Garsen MP Danson Mungatana and six others have been arrested over allegations of theft amounting to Sh51.5 million from Kilifi County public funds.
The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) detectives arrested the MP on Wednesday night in Nairobi and took him to Malindi, where he is linked to the scam by a businesswoman who claimed the politician used her company as a conduit to illegally receive Sh9.1 million from the county government.
The practising lawyer, who once chaired the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) board of directors, will be arraigned at the Malindi Law Courts with other suspects on graft charges. Initially, Mr Mungatana denied the claims by Lucy Wanjugu Kibogodi, a director of Zohal Services Limited, which was named as one of the beneficiaries of the loot. In 2016, Ms Wanjugu swore an affidavit claiming Mungatana was part of the theft engineered through IFMIS, the government's integrated financial management system.
The detectives are also pursuing another 14 suspects connected to the theft who are still at large.
IFMIS at the centre
The Integrated Financial Management Information System was introduced to digitise government payments and reduce opportunities for fraud. Yet multiple county-level scandals have shown that systems are only as strong as the controls around them — ghost vendors, collusion between suppliers and county officials, and weaknesses in payment approvals have repeatedly been cited in audit reports by the Auditor General.
Who is Danson Mungatana?
Mungatana served as Garsen MP and as an assistant minister in the Kibaki-era government, and is a practising advocate. He once chaired the KPA board, one of the most influential parastatal appointments in Kenya's maritime sector. A court case of this magnitude marks a dramatic turn for a figure who has remained active in Tana River and coastal politics.
What happens next
The EACC is expected to prefer charges before the Anti-Corruption Court, where bail applications and pre-trial hearings will follow. Graft cases involving public funds in Kenya's devolved units have become a staple of the courts, with convictions often hinging on documentary trails linking withdrawals to beneficiaries.
