By Editorial Team
Kenya Power and Lighting Company PLC picked Vivienne Yeda Apopo as the chairperson to its board of Directors last Friday.
The state-owned power supplier which was having an Annual General Meeting (AGM) announced a loss of Sh2.98 billion shillings for the financial year ending June 2020.
KPLC results are unaudited, with the final numbers expected in January 2021.
With such a struggling firm, Vivienne Yeda Apopo was the last person to appoint to help turn it around.
Ms Yeda has been fingered in numerous corruption scandals at East African Development Bank (EADB) where she is the director.
Mismanagement has dogged EADB with Yeda Apopo at the helm.
Sources point to Ms Yeda being involved in falsification of financial figures at EADB in 2015.
It is said that towards the end of the year 2015, Vivienne retained the services of Knight Frank to value the bank properties in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. Knight Frank carried the valuation and prepared a report which was presented to Yeda.
The report had presented values indicating a loss in value of some of the properties in Tanzania. This would have meant that she reports a lower profit. She then hired another firm in Tanzania called African Properties, who they influenced to give a higher value of the property in Tanzania which was not in line with fair market value. Documents confirm that indeed the two companies were hired to carry out the valuation of standard practice which requires all assets of a company to be valued by one firm even if in different countries as long as the best firm has presence in that country which in this case Knight Frank does have offices in Tanzania.
To make matters worse, she picked the inflated valuation figures from African Properties Ltd report for the Tanzania bank assets and inserted those figures into the Knight Frank report which was then presented to the external auditors for inclusion in their audit report. One of the attached documents highlights clearly an email from the Ag. Finance Manager to Vivienne indicating that what was done is not acceptable according to accounting standards).
Because she always manipulates the property valuation figures to help her lie to the public and yourselves that the bank is making profits. This is criminal. She should never have misrepresented the Knight Frank report by inserting inflated figures from a report by African Properties Ltd.
There’s more; Senior Managers told audit firm Deloitte that she misappropriated over Sh6.5 million in the financial years 013/2014, 2014/2015 and 2014/2015. The money often ended in her account as bonus.
‘During the interview between the senior managers and the board members, the Directors were shocked to hear that staff never receive end of year bonuses even when the board has annually approved a budget of USD 65,000 annually for staff end of year bonuses. Vivienne has been drawing the entire USD 65,000 which ends up on her personal account’, states an email source seen by Kenyanbusinessfeed.com
Vivienne is also accused of procedurally giving loans to entities associated with Jubilee Party Secretary General Raphael Tuju.
Tuju was given a Sh1.5 billion loan advance for construction of a two-storey bungalows sitting on a 20-acre forested land dubbed Entim Sidai.
The default in paying the loans was occasioned by the slow progress of works on the property and by Tuju being ‘out of money’.
The tussle between EADB and Tuju is still playing out in court.
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