Football Kenya Federation (FKF) President Nick Mwendwa has been grilled by the detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI) over alleged embezzlement of funds.
Goal understands Mwendwa was taken for questioning regarding the Ksh244 million allocated to Harambee Stars when they honoured the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in Egypt.
“He has been at Karura [DCI headquarters] in the last two days. The detectives believe Mwendwa has some serious questions to answer regarding a number of budgetary issues,” a source within DCI told Goal.
The murmurs over the usage of the money allocated to the team has been been made even louder as players who participated in the tournament, are yet to receive their bonuses in full.
Harambee Stars have not been paid even their winning allowances after they beat Tanzania in the last group match.
The millions budgeted for Harambee Stars became an area of contention between the then Sports Permanent Secretary Peter Kaberia and Mwendwa.
In November 2019, FKF prepared their report on the use of the said amount of money but the Sports Ministry then found the report lacking and unable to answer concrete questions.
The Ministry went on to hand over the report to the Auditor General for a further probe.
Harambee Starlets found themselves at the crossfire when they were about to face Zambia for the Tokyo Olympics qualifying match which was set for November 9, 2019.
It took the intervention of the Cabinet Secretary for Sports Amina Mohammed to see that the women's national team honoured the match finally.
Goal further understands Mwendwa was also put to task on how the federation spent KSh135 million in the purchase of an Outside Broadcasting (OB) van.
One of the complainants is understood to have wanted to know why FKF went on to lease the outside broadcasting equipment from a company that went into liquidation shortly after.
The OB van issue had attracted the eyes of Fifa and a section of football stakeholders who wanted FKF to satisfactorily answer all the questions regarding the purchase of the equipment.
Mwendwa has always stated the Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Mombasa in 2017 approved the purchase of the van as they prepared for SuperSport TV's exit from the Kenyan football scene.
“We did everything overboard with total transparency and all I can say is the federation is currently a creditor after WTS Group which sold us the van went into administration,” Mwendwa said in defence of their purchase in an earlier interview.
DCI is understood to be preparing their files before handing it over to the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) for further action.
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