Nairobi Mayor gold chain worth millions still missing
Almost all gold chains worth hundreds of millions of shillings worn by Mayors as symbols of authority in the defunct local governments are still missing.
According to Kinuthia Wa Mwangi, the former chairman of the Transition Authority, a body set up to secure all assets of the bodies that were replaced by the current 47 county governments after the promulgation of the new Constitution, the gold chains are yet to be found.
“I noted when we did the inventory of assets for each county the chains and gnaws (worn by mayors) were not part of it. It is not that it was taken, it was stolen. In a highly guarded institution how was it stolen? It means somebody made money out of it” Wa Mwangi told K24.
Wa Mwangi said most of the chains are still missing despite efforts to compel the former municipal councils to surrender them.
In May 2015, Sunday Nation reported that only Embu and Bungoma Municipalities had returned their gold chains to the Transition Authority.
Nairobi’s last Mayor George Aladwa (now MP for Makadara) has noted that when he took over the seat in August 2011 in an acting capacity following the stepping down of his predecessor Geoffrey Majiwa over a corruption scandal, he never wore the gold chain.
This is because the mayoral chains which was estimated to be worth Sh180 million at the time, was nowhere to be found.
“When I was performing my duties, I didn’t have that chain I had the maze” Aladwa noted
In 2006, former Nairobi Mayor Dick Waweru and town clerk Godfrey Mate were charged for stealing a mayoral gold chain worth Sh9.8 million that had been purchased to replace the previous one that went missing.
The chains were never recovered.
Wa Mwangi has now urged Director of Public Prosecution Noordin Haji and The Director of Criminal Investigation George Kinoti to pursue the matter and put the suspects on trail