REVEALED: WHY Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore is in TROUBLE and May go DOWN soon

Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore is a man under siege. The Safaricom boss has even been forced to cancel public events after the KPMG audit forensic report uncovered massive corruption, more than 20 tenders worth Sh. 289.4 billion were awarded without following internal policies and control processes.

According to KPMG forensic audit report, the controversial tenders had been issued within the last 23 months. The company’s top managers have been implicated in alleged multibillion-shilling tendering irregularities at the telecoms giant which recently announced a Sh38 billion profit for 2015 financial year.

Safaricom Chief Finance Officer John Tombleson and four other senior executives are named as having influenced the purchase of a Sh1.15 billion five-acre piece of land at Garden City, where the telco plans to build its headquarters.

The forensic auditors also questioned payments of Sh1.2 billion to seven firms for marketing activations that promote the Safaricom brand and its products. The forensic audit report also questions the company’s procurement of corporate promotional merchandise worth Sh201 million from Vajas Manufacturers Ltd, Chinese technology firm,Huawei’s Sh1.25 billion contract to upgrade the M-Pesa platform and payments of Sh1.2 billion to media services company Scanad, which is a subsidiary of WPP Scangroup

National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi on May 5th directed the Departmental Committee on Finance, Planning and Trade to investigate the tender dealings at Safaricom and report back to the House within 60 days.

The company is alleged to have hired bloggers and mainstream media to fire-fight/kill the forensic audit report that exposed corruption ring at the telco giant. Bob Collymore will be summoned to appear before parliament committee on investments, he will be grilled on the massive corruption and putting company stakeholders to a higher risk.

This is the first time massive corruption has been reported in a corporate giant, Under Collymore’s successor Michael Joseph such outright corruption was unheard of.

Things are thick for Bob Collymore who was banned from attending an anti-corruption summit in London, United Kingdom held between the 12-13th May 2016. Mr Collymore was scheduled to attend as a panellist but immediately the dossier was released by KPMG, the organisers replaced him with Paul Polman, the CEO of Unilever. The decision to drop Collymore was agreed with Vodafone that owns majority stake in Safaricom.

Safaricom is a public company with government of Kenya owning 35% of its shares, Vodafone UK 40% and the general public 25% reason why parliament will be grilling Collymore.

Parliament should exert pressure Collymore explain the massive corruption that seem to set the the biggest telco in the foot-steps of Kenya Airways and Uchumi.