Senators ask EACC to probe Barchok over irregular Sh539 payment
National
By
Edwin Nyarangi
| Nov 06, 2025
Bomet Governor Hillary Barchok and senior county officials in his administration are likely to face the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission over procurement irregularities and questionable payment of pending bills running into millions of shillings in the county.
Barchok, who appeared before the Senate County Public Accounts Committee, had difficulties explaining the discrepancies concerning the county government's expenditure of Sh539 million as payment of suspicious pending bills with no supporting documents for the work done.
The Committee, chaired by Homa Bay Senator Moses Kajwang called on the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) to widen its investigations into blatant financial malpractices at the county government, describing the devolved unit as a “den of procurement irregularities.”
The development comes after the Senate watchdog committee unearthed glaring irregularities in procurement, revenue collection discrepancies, irregular award of contracts and variations as well as fictitious pending bills claims.
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“We would like to know whether we have some people trying to make false claims to steal from Bomet people,” said Kajwang’.
The Homa Bay Senator said the irregular award of tender contracts by the county government has left the devolved unit grappling with pending bills of Sh1.21 billion and described its procurement department as a crime scene, accusing county officers of being behind the ghost invoices.
The Senate Committee established the damning revelations against the county administration included projects claimed to have been undertaken yet they lacked contract numbers, no dates of award, work done and even Local Purchase orders (LPOs).
This comes up just a month after the Governor was arraigned before a Nairobi anti-corruption court to face multiple corruption-related charges, including conflict of interest, acquisition of proceeds of crime, and money laundering.
Barchok faced seven charges emanating from a series of transactions involving the award of tenders to Chemasus Construction Limited, with one of the procurement irregularities including signing of a contract four days after notification of tender award, contrary to the law.
Bomet Senator Hillary Sigei said that such cases form the bulk of entries in the pending bills list, wondering where the County administration will get documents unless they are going to cook them and bring them back to the Senate.
“I would like to state that I do not know how the entries without dates and Local Purchase Orders made it into the list. I think they were made to make us look bad before the residents of Bomet County, which is very unfortunate,” said Prof Barchok.
The Governor argued that some of the pending bills claims were still undergoing verification and did not have the necessary documentation.
Kitui Senator Enock Wambua said that it was clear that Barchok does know how much his administration owes the various entities and individuals the county government did business with which raises a lot of concerns despite spending millions of shillings in pending bills verification.
The county government was also on the spot over glaring discrepancies in revenue collection, where despite paying millions to a new firm to collect its own source revenue, the devolved unit recorded a Sh6 million drop in realised revenue in the financial year ended June 30, 2024.
Senators also raised concerns as to why the county government recorded a Sh600 million increase in wage bill within the financial year, pushing its wage bill to 50 percent of total revenue contrary to the law limiting the percentage to 35 percent.