An Interim Independent Electoral Commission official loads ballot boxes
and other voting materials onto a vehicle at Tac Centre in Eldoret East
constituency on August 3, 2010. A UK court has been told that IIEC top
officials were paid bribes to award the tender for the ballot papers to
Smith & Ouzman, a UK company. FILE PHOTO | JARED NYATAYA |
NATION MEDIA GROUP
A British printer paid a Kenyan agent huge amounts of money in
commission because the agent was an important man in the country, he has
claimed in court.
Mr Nicholas Smith, while conceding
that the commission he claimed to have paid his agent was way too high,
argued that it was proportionate because one of the local agents was
“highly-regarded, chauffeur-driven, sometimes with police outriders, and
commonly on the evening news”.
However, he denied that the money was meant as a bribe.
Mr
Smith is a director of Smith & Ouzman which, prosecutors say, paid
bribes to officials of the Interim Independent Electoral Commission
(IIEC) and the Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) to get
lucrative printing tenders.
The company’s agent was
Trevy James Oyombra, a 35-year-old former procurement clerk at the
disbanded Electoral Commission of Kenya.
On Friday, Mr Smith’s former wife burst out in tears at the Southwark Crown court soon after the accused was put in the dock.
Proceedings were put on hold for five minutes as a result of the incident.
When
the presiding judge, Mr Justice Higgins, returned to the chambers after
the short recess, he said the incident had been “disruptive to the
jury”.
Indeed, one of the four women jurors looked
upset. The case has 11 jurors, seven men and four women. The jury will
decide whether the accused have a case to answer.
TRUSTWORTHY FAMILY MAN
Earlier,
a retired school teacher, Ms Margaret Greenwood, had given a supporting
character witness in which she described Mr Smith as an honest,
respected and trustworthy family man, who was active in his church,
hospital and local community.
The prosecution has
alleged that Mr Christopher Smith, his son Mr Nicholas Smith and their
company, Smith & Ouzman Limited, together with a Kenyan identified
as Trevy James Oyombra, corruptly agreed to make payments to officials
employed at the IIEC as an inducement or reward for the award of
contracts to print election materials. The offence was committed between
October 1 and December 31, 2010,
In the second count,
they are accused of corruptly making payments to officials employed at
the Kenya National Examinations Council as an inducement or reward for
the award of contracts to print national examination certificates.
They have all denied the charges.
NO PROTOCOL
In
his defence, Mr Smith said that he introduced formal contracts for
agents with whom his firm worked in various countries. Before 2008, he
said, agents worked on the basis of “handshakes”. He said there had been
no protocol within the company on how to appoint agents, carry out due
diligence or a policy on restrictions about which bank accounts money
could be deposited.
Mr Smith told the court that
family businesses — like Smith & Ouzman — were popular in Africa. He
claimed that culturally, Africans preferred family businesses because
they could be trusted and for this reason, Smith & Ouzman had an
edge over its competitors.
African States, he further
claimed, “liked shopping” for services in the UK because they were not
keen on local businesses. He also said the company and its officials
were respected because they had the expertise and were unlikely to be
connected to a government or a faction.
He also said
that because of the new and young democracies in Africa with election
cycles of four or five years, there was pressure on agents to seek
higher commissions. To him, agents had local knowledge, spoke the
language, reduced cost, had “noses to the ground” and monitored
potential businesses and their likely competitors.
Hearing continues Monday
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