OT-Morpho opens up on how it won an IEBC tender

The French firm that supplied the Sh4.19 billion KIEMS kits to IEBC told MPs it won the multi-billion tender fairly and denied handing out bribes to manipulate the process.

Appearing before the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee, IDEMIA senior vice-president Olivier Charlanes and executive vice-president Mathew Foxton, however, admitted that IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati, commissioners Abdi Guliye and former commisioner Roseline Akombe were in constant communication with the firms senior managers.

They confessed meeting sacked CEO Ezra Chiloba and two more commissioners whose names they could not remember.

The engagements – Charlanes said – were through organised formal meetings, but did not divulge more details.

“My team had contact with CEO Mr Chiloba, Marjan Husein Marjan (acting CEO) and James Muhati (ICT Director). We also met Chebukati from time to time, Guliye and Roseline. Just that I have bad memories, but they were six commissioners, ” Charlanes said.

IEBC laws give the tendering functions exclusively to the Commission’s Secretariat and not the Commissioners.

IDEMIA was formerly known as OT-Morpho, the company which IEBC contracted to supply the Kenya Integrated Election Management Systems for 2017.

IDEMIA (formerly Ot-Morpho) Vice President Communications Matthew Foxton (R) and President for Africa Muzaffar Khokhar when they appeared before Parliamentary Accounts Committee to answer to the audit queries over the 2017 election. /JACK OWUOR

According to IEBC own records, decision to award the lucrative tender to the French firm created two factions at the commission.

Chebukati, then commissioners Consolata Nkatha, Roselyne Akombe and Margaret Mwachanya pushed for OT-Morpho while Boya Molu, Paul Kurgat and Abdi Guliye opposed the idea, arguing the deal did not offer value for money.

“Can you categorically tell this committee whether you paid anything to any of these commissioners?” posed MP Opiyo Wandayi , the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, yesterday

Charlane said the firm won the tender fairly and denied ever paying a bribe to any IEBC official

“As a company, we have no doubt that we dutifully provided a robust system to IEBC, as part of our commitment to empower citizens to vote in ways that are now possible in a connected environment,” Marlane stated.

The company also contradicted IEBC’s position that the servers were in France and instead told MPs that they were in the United Kingdom.

The firm’s proprietors also told MPs that a number of their employees received death threats after the August 8, 2017 elections from members of the public over the confusion that marred the last election.

The MPs also heard the French firm entered yet another multi-billion contract with the Ministry of Interior for the provision of 31,500 mobile biometric kits to be used in the upcoming national population census.

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