City Hall favours ‘special’ law firms to handle its cases – Gathungu

Eight ‘special’ law firms handled between four and 20 cases among the 159 legal cases involving the Nairobi city county government in the last financial year.

This has been revealed by the Auditor General Nancy Gathungu in her 2023/24 audit report, which states that the John Sakaja administration failed to explain the criteria that was used to allocate multiple cases to the eight advocates out of the three hundred and fifty prequalified.

This is a contravention of Section 91(5) of the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Regulations, 2020, which require accounting officers to ensure a fair and equitable rotation amongst the persons on the list under Sections 57, 71, and 106 of the Act.

The AoG further indicates that the Lack of competitiveness in the process of selection for legal firms to represent Nairobi City County is the result of inflated legal costs and missing of opportunities to engage more qualified service providers.

Gathungu also indicates that City Hall has been appointing lawyers to represent them without subjecting them to any competitive process to select the best.

“The advocates were appointed directly from the list of prequalified legal firms without subjecting them to a mini competition. No ad hoc evaluation committee was formed to assess quotations for legal services from the list of prequalified legal firms, nor were evaluation reports provided; hence the audit could not verify how the legal firms were selected to provide services to the County,” Gathungu states.

“This lack of a competitive process may have resulted in inflated costs and missed opportunities to engage more qualified service providers,” she adds.

The audit reveals that the County has a total of Sh21,371,004,293 as legal pending bills as of June 30, 2023, broken down as Sh17,103,999,971 and decretal sums of Sh4,267,004,322

A review of the payments by Gathungu revealed that the Advocates submitted fee notes, some of which were revised, but the county did not submit the documentation detailing the fee notes, and the summary of the services rendered were not submitted for audit review

“The necessary documentation detailing the basis of the fee notes, by the Advocates Remuneration Order, as well as a summary of the services rendered by the lawyers, was not provided for audit review,” she says.

She warns the city government for delaying the payment of old legal pending bills while they pay the new current ones.

“Management paid some advocates who were defending the County in new cases, while payment for some older cases has remained outstanding for many years. The County should prioritize payments for older cases on a first-in, first-out principle,” Gathungu warns.

This comes even as the AOG accused the City Hall administration of failing to pay fines and penalties dating from the 1990’s issued by the court despite there being several orders over the same.

City Hall has been previously accused of prioritising legal pending bills amid claims some County officials benefit from kickbacks.