Kenya: Chief prosecutor orders criminal investigation of Safaricom staff over election

Kenya’s top prosecutor ordered a criminal investigation on Tuesday of 6 employees of the wireless telecommunications operator Safaricom for allegedly conspiring with election board officials to meddle with the now nullified August 8 presidential election.

Safaricom has dismissed the accusations as “reckless, callous and unnecessary” and warned that the allegations could imperil the lives of its members of staff.

The country’s Supreme Court annulled President Uhuru Kenyatta’s re-election on September 1, citing irregularities and illegalities in the transmission of results, and ordered another election within 60 days.

Kenya used 2 systems to transmit results from polling stations: paper forms and the electronic transmission of the vote tallies plus scanned copies of the forms, using 3 local wireless telecommunications firms.

The A letter from public prosecutions director Keriako Tobiko says a team of senior prosecutors will assist in investigating 6 staff members named by opposition politicians for possible meddling with the election results, which were later nullified.
Opposition leader Raila Odinga accused Safaricom of failing to alert the authorities about illegal activities during the electronic transmission of results.
According to Odinga, the results were diverted to a server in Europe rather than the election center in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

Safaricom is East Africa’s biggest company by market value.
Kenya’s telecoms regulator, the Communications Authority, said no cases of transmission failure had been reported by the 3 wireless operators contracted by the election board.

Source: Agencies