Days after Kenya Pipeline MD Joe Sang resigned after grave allegations were labeled against him for the loss of 2 million liters of fuel, DCI detectives have today arrested him alongside other officials of the KPC.
Kenyans had called for the arrest of Sang saying that his resignation alone was not enough. DCI seem to have finally obliged to Kenyans’ request and conducted the said arrests.
Joe Sang quit his position on Tuesday as the KPC board invited the DCI to investigate the disappearance of the fuel that KPC claimed either spilt or was stolen by vandals.
Makueni Senator Mutula Kilonzo Jnr yesterday weighed in on the ongoing multi-million debate. According to Mutula, KPC Managing Director Joe Sang was given two options, to either resign or face the sack.
The MD chose to Resign, a move that elicited various reactions with many Kenyans calling for his immediate arrest and prosecution.
Others arrested alongside Joe Sang include, Vincent Cheruiyot (General Manager Supply Chain), Billy Aseka (General Manager Infrastructure) and Gloria Khafafa (Company Secretary).
KPC MD Mr Sang, whose first term was to end in April next year, handed his letter to the board on Tuesday morning.
In the letter, Mr Sang said that “due to personal reasons”, he would not be seeking the extension of his term, which effectively ends his troubled tenure at KPC.
In a press statement signed by KPC chairman John Ngumi, the board on Tuesday also invited oil-marketing companies (OMCs) to conduct a forensic audit of stock positions and to complete the exercise by December 31.
“The board directed management to accord maximum cooperation to both the DCI and the forensic auditors,” Mr Ngumi said.
This followed a row between KPC and major oil companies over the whereabouts of 21 million litres of fuel, worth over Sh2 billion, which the company claims spilt in the fields or was stolen in the past two years.
The 10 leading oil marketers had written a joint letter dated October 26, 2018 in which they demanded to conduct their own forensic audit to check the accuracy of stock statements issued by KPC and get to the bottom of what was turning out to be bogus records of loss.
KPC has no fuel of its own and holds stock in its system on behalf of the oil marketers and now cannot account for the missing product.
It all started on July 5, 2018, when Mr Sang wrote a letter to Supplycor Kenya Limited, the independent legal entity incorporated by the oil-marketing companies in Kenya to coordinate activities along the fuel supply chain.
In the letter, Mr Sang notified the firms that in the past two years, a total of 11.646 million litres of fuel got lost due to “vandalism and spillages of the main line from Mombasa to Nairobi”.
Will Sang’s arrest finally help solve the mystery behind the millions of liters of fuel lost?