NAIROBI, Kenya- A senior National Youth Service (NYS) employee has denied any links to a hotel in Embu that was raided by anti-graft agency detectives in a Sh2 billion probe.
On Friday, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) announced it had conducted a raid at the Mavvel Hotel, allegedly linked to David Mbogo Muthee, the Head of Procurement at the NYS Training School in Gilgil.
EACC said the operation yielded evidentiary material to support investigations into suspected conflict of interest and abuse of office involving senior NYS officials.
However, Mbogo has now written to EACC accusing the commission of orchestrating a smear campaign and failing to conclude investigations that began in May last year.
In a letter dated April 20, through his lawyer and addressed to the EACC head of investigations, the procurement boss accuses the Commission of making persistent, erroneous and highly prejudicial statements about him.
“These assertions, as we shall demonstrate, are false, misleading, and made in reckless disregard of facts already within your possession,” the letter, received at EACC on Monday, April 20, reads in part.
It adds: “We state at the outset that the conduct of the Commission, taken cumulatively and over time, amounts to a deliberate and sustained pattern of harassment, misrepresentation, and abuse of investigative powers.”
Mbogo’s lawyer, Onuong’a Makori of Makori & Karimi Advocates, attached a CR12 certificate to demonstrate that his client has no ownership interest in the hotel.
“This assertion is entirely false, misleading, and unsupported by any evidence whatsoever, and is particularly egregious given that your Commission has at all material times been in possession of documentation relating to the hotel, including a CR12 (attached) clearly demonstrating that our client holds no ownership interest in the said entity.”
The CR12 indicates that Naftali Kiberu is the sole director and shareholder of The Mavvel Place Limited.
While accusing EACC of unlawfully targeting and harassing his client, the lawyer questioned why the Commission obtained a parallel search warrant from a Nyeri court while the matter was pending at the Milimani Law Courts in Nairobi, where a similar warrant had earlier been lifted.
“Warrants were obtained from the Magistrates Court at Milimani (Criminal) with the alleged offences forming the basis of your investigations stated to have occurred between January 2017 and March 2025, a period during which our client was, as stated above, not in office and had no control, authority or involvement whatsoever,” Makori states.
The lawyer noted that Mbogo served as Head of Supply Chain Management at the National Youth Service for only twenty-one (21) days, from April 17, 2025 to May 7, 2025—“a fact that is now well within your knowledge and is supported and demonstrated by his Letter of Posting”—yet he is under investigation for procurement irregularities spanning more than a decade.
Mbogo maintains he was not involved in the procurement processes during the period under review, noting that no audit has raised queries over the transactions and that his predecessor had already recorded statements with EACC on the tendering process.
“This limited tenure is critical, as the allegations your Commission seeks to advance relate to a period extending outside this timeframe—that is, from 2017 to March 2025—during which our client neither held office nor exercised any authority over the matters now under investigation.”
The lawyer further states: “In or about May 2025, your Commission conducted a similar raid which was widely and sensationally publicised across its social media platforms. In that publication, the Commission alleged that persons under investigation were involved in a purported heist of over Kenya Shillings Two Billion (Sh2,000,000,000) at the NYS.”
He adds that, in a manner identical to the present instance, EACC sought to link his client to the premises known as Mavvel Hotel and to the alleged loss of public funds, going so far as to assert or imply that he is the owner of the hotel.
“The publications made by your Commission in May 2025 and April 2026 are materially identical and no new facts have been disclosed. This demonstrates that the Commission is not engaged in a genuine investigation, but rather in recycling allegations for purposes of public sensationalism and reputational damage.”
Mbogo is now demanding that EACC retract the statement, desist from further misrepresentation and issue a public apology within seven days through a statement on X (formerly Twitter), with equal prominence to the earlier posts.
“TAKE NOTICE that in default, we have firm instructions to institute proceedings seeking a declaration of constitutional violations, injunctive relief and damages for reputational injury and defamation. This action shall be taken without further reference to you and all such proceedings shall be at your peril as to costs and incidental consequences.”
