SONY SUGAR TOP OFFICIALS MAY APPEAR IN COURT TO ANSWER GRAFT CHARGES INVOLVING THE PRCHASE OF FERTILISERS TWO YEARS AGO

By Arum Tidi
Luocome, Migori

Reports emerging from Awendo in Migori district have hinted that three or four top officials of the Sony Sugar Company who were involved in the massive supply of fertilizers worth Kshs. 200 million two year ago may soon appear before the court to answer graft charges.

The company lost huge amount of money over the scam. The fertilizers, which were in excess of the company requirement for a couple of years, were sourced from three different suppliers. They were paid for promptly in cash money, not even in according to one month of 90 days credit by way of invoicing the company as the normal practices of suppliers.

According to sources at the Awendo based firm, investigators from the Kenya Anti Corruption Commission (KACC) have been pitching camp at the factory for the last two months.

Also being investigated was the allegations that Sony Sugar had parted with Kshs 3 million it paid out to a bogus supplier who was supposed to import a second hand land grader from Suoth Africa. The company made a down deposit of Kshs 3 million towards purchase of the second hand grader. The grader, which never arrived, was to cost Kshs 8 million. But the money paid in advance has never been refunded.

Sony Sugar recently acquired three brand new graders, which were given to the company by the Kenya Sugar Board for free to enable the company maintain its feeder and access roads for easy transportation of cane from the field to the factory.

The KACC investigators were said to be interested in mega scam in which a few influential businessmen and politicians were given the monopoly of distributing the company's made sugar at concessionally reduced prices.

The three distributors, one of them said to be a senior politician within the environ of Awendo, were for quite sometime getting sugar at a reduced prices of Kshs 2200 for a bag of 50kg instead of the normal prices of Kshs 2550, which is marketing at Kshs 3000/=

Sony Sugar is producing 5000 bags of sugar daily and if the looting moguls were making a profit of 300/= per bag of 50kg daily, this comes to Kshs one million per day!!

The scam made several unscrupulous businessmen and a politician instant millionaire. One of the beneficiaries is an employee of the company, who has since enriched himself and opened a chain of supermarket in both Awendo and Migori towns. He is also said to be the same man whose pickup van is allegedly being used by the same senior politician for ferrying armed youths and political goons supporting the politicians to funeral places where they are said to be causing havoc with the lives of the local population.

The politician, whose popularity is said to have waned is, alleged to have gotten the lion's share in the sugar sales scandal, followed by his cousin, who is also his point man at the Sony Sugar. The scam led to the sacking of the former managing Director of the Sony Sugar Company Mr. Ambrose Otieno and also the removal of the former company's board chairman Mr. Eli Otondi.

Fear has gripped the Awendo based sugar company that several of its top officials will be arraigned in court soon.

Some of the suppliers, according to a source, were working in collaborations with top ministry officials and CEO's from other Sugar companies as well as well known brokers and wheeler-dealers when they flooded the Sony Sugar stores with already expired fertilizers and made away with millions of shillings.