• Savula is the director of the seven firms that were also charged with the same offences.
• Gituku said there was immense pressure from advertisers and an audit was conducted to verify the genuine pending bills owed to various media houses.
Image: FILE
Former Government Advertising Agency director Ngare Gituku on Wednesday told the court he was not aware of any conspiracy hatched by Kakamega Deputy Governor Ayub Savula and 28 others to defraud the government of Sh122.3 million.
Gituku told trial magistrate Lucas Onyina there was immense pressure from advertisers and an audit was conducted to verify the genuine pending bills owed to various media houses.
He was categorical that if any payment was made it was because there were approvals and paper trails supporting payments.
The audit, he explained, revealed that some of the pending bills were for Melsab Company Limited, Johnnewton Agency Limited, Sunday publishers, Express Media Group and Cross Continental Agency Limited.
Gituku, while being cross-examined by the defence counsel, said there was evidence to support payments made to Savula and his companies and that the advertisements deserved to be compensated for.
Gituku was testifying in a case in which former PS Sammy Itemere and others are charged with stealing Sh122 million from the agency.
Itemere was the PS at the Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology when the fraud was allegedly committed.
Also facing the charges is Dennis Chebitwey, who was heading the Government Advertising Agency when the funds were allegedly fraudulently paid out to fictitious companies, which were listed as having provided services to various government departments.
Savula, an accused person in the case, is the director of the seven firms that were also charged with the same offences, including the publishers of Sunday Express, a weekly newspaper that circulates in Nairobi only.
The prosecution witness on Wednesday confirmed to the court that the media companies offered services for which payment was due including those charged before the court.
"I had no problem authorising payments (pending bills) because there was documentation showing the ads were carried," he said.
The defence team further drew Gituku's attention to a personal statement he drafted detailing how GAA came to be.
From the statement, he mentions that GAA had a plethora of enemies and that one “Mathew Mutuma could not stand GAA. He would write about it..."
The agency was created in 2015 to handle all government advertisements in electronic and print media. It publishes My Gov, a weekly insert distributed in the dailies.
Hearing continues.