Meet ‘Tender Queen’ Du Ying Catic Running The Show At Kenya Power Puppeting the MD

NAIROBI – While Kenya Power Managing Director Joseph Siror sits pretty in boardrooms signing ceremonial documents, the real power at the utility giant flows through the manicured hands of Du Ying Catic, a Chinese national who has transformed an alleged bedroom arrangement into a multi-billion shilling procurement empire that would make seasoned kleptocrats weep with envy.

Du Ying, operating under the business moniker “Chimu Electric,” has turned Kenya Power’s Harambee Avenue headquarters into her personal tender supermarket.

Company insiders speak in whispers about the untouchable Chinese woman who drops names left, right and center, wielding influence that extends far beyond what any contractor should possess.

The reason for her immunity is Kenya Power’s worst-kept secret: she shares apparently, his procurement decisions.

The relationship between the MD and his Chinese handler has created a perfect storm of compromised decision-making.

Siror cannot expose Du Ying’s tender manipulations without exposing their affair.

Du Ying cannot be touched because doing so would unravel the managing director himself. It is corruption’s perfect mutual assured destruction, except the only casualties are Kenyan taxpayers and the national power grid.

Kenya Insights has established that Du Ying’s procurement tentacles stretch across virtually every lucrative tender category at Kenya Power.

Her portfolio reads like a shopping list from hell: smart meters worth billions, electric motorcycles, fleet tracking systems, support services, and spare parts for transformers.

Each contract bears her fingerprints, from suspiciously tailored specifications to the mysterious elimination of more qualified competitors.

The smart meters scandal best illustrates Du Ying’s brazen methodology.

The Public Procurement Regulatory Authority caught Kenya Power red-handed awarding a multi-billion shilling contract to Smart Metres Technology Ltd while completely disregarding the company’s own bidding rules.

The kicker? Smart Metres Technology had failed to deliver 91,000 metres on time from previous orders.

Yet somehow, despite documented failure, they secured another massive contract.

Sources directly link the company to Du Ying’s business network, making the award less a procurement decision and more a wealth transfer scheme.

Du Ying’s genius lies in her corporate camouflage. Rather than operating through one easily traceable company, she has cultivated a constellation of proxy entities, each positioned to bid for different tender categories.

This shell game makes regulatory oversight nearly impossible. By the time anyone connects the dots, contracts are signed, money is flowing, and Du Ying is already orchestrating her next score.

Company insiders paint a grim picture of life under Du Ying’s reign.

Those who question irregular tenders face what sources describe as systematic oppression and poor treatment.

Careers are destroyed, assignments are manipulated, and the message is clear: cross the tender queen at your peril.

The few brave souls who have raised concerns about procurement irregularities find themselves professionally exiled, watching from the sidelines as Du Ying continues her looting spree.

Her tax evasion schemes add another layer to the theft.

While ordinary Kenyan businesses buckle under tax burdens, Du Ying allegedly channels profits through elaborate structures designed to minimize her tax footprint. She steals from Kenyans twice: first through inflated public contracts, then by denying the treasury its rightful revenue share.

Joseph Siror’s complicity transforms this from a procurement scandal into a national security issue.

Every tender Du Ying rigs is a tender Siror enables.

Every cancelled contract that mysteriously benefits her network is a contract Siror signs off on.

The board of trustees, led by figures like Ruth Ng’ang’a, has maintained a deafening silence as Du Ying’s empire grows.

Their failure to investigate the cascade of irregularities suggests either catastrophic incompetence or deliberate complicity.

Either way, they have failed in their oversight mandate so spectacularly that Kenya Power has become a case study in corporate governance collapse.

Kenya Power Managing Director and CEO Joseph Siror

The implications ripple far beyond balance sheets. Every shilling stolen through rigged tenders is a shilling not spent on infrastructure. Every inflated contract price gets passed to consumers through higher tariffs.

Every compromised procurement decision undermines grid reliability, causing outages that cripple businesses and impoverish families. Du Ying’s personal enrichment comes at the direct expense of Kenya’s economic development.

Her operation exposes dangerous vulnerabilities in how Kenya manages foreign contractors.

While legitimate Chinese firms contribute positively to infrastructure development, Du Ying represents predatory exploitation of weak governance by a foreign national who recognized the right connection unlocks opportunities that merit and competition never could.

The message to honest businesses is devastating: why invest in capacity building when contracts go to the managing director’s mistress? Why follow procurement rules when breaking them carries no consequences for the connected few? Du Ying’s reign normalizes corruption and punishes integrity, poisoning Kenya’s entire business environment.

Urgent intervention is required.

The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission must investigate every tender bearing Du Ying’s fingerprints.

The Director of Public Prosecutions should examine criminal charges against all enablers. The Energy Cabinet Secretary must explain how oversight failed so catastrophically that a foreign national captured an entire parastatal’s procurement function through sexual manipulation of its chief executive.

Siror’s position is untenable.

A managing director who trades procurement decisions for whichever’s favors cannot lead a strategic national asset. His removal should be immediate, followed by criminal investigation into his role facilitating what amounts to organized looting of public resources.

Du Ying herself must face consequences. Immigration authorities should review her status immediately.

If allegations are substantiated, deportation and blacklisting are baseline responses, alongside asset recovery targeting proceeds from corrupt contracts. She has allegedly violated every term of whatever permits allow her Kenyan operations.

Kenya Power needs genuine transparency where procurement happens in public view with clear justifications for every decision.

The current opacity creates perfect conditions for Du Ying’s schemes. Sunlight remains the best disinfectant for corruption.

As electricity bills climb and service deteriorates, ordinary Kenyans deserve answers. How much money has been stolen? Who benefited? What prevents future looting? They deserve accountability beyond token resignations, including prosecutions and asset recovery that sends an unmistakable message.

Du Ying’s transformation to tender queen represents corruption at its most brazen, combining the intimate and institutional into a web of compromise that has cost taxpayers billions while enriching a foreign national who understood that in Kenya’s broken system, the right relationship trumps the right qualifications.

Whether Kenya’s institutions can hold the powerful accountable or whether Du Ying joins the long list of corruption suspects who evaded justice will define this scandal and the country’s governance future. The tender queen’s reign must end with accountability proving that consequence-free corruption in parastatals is finally over.

For Kenya Power, the power sector, and millions of Kenyans who deserve honest governance, anything less than full accountability would be another betrayal in a system already drowning in them.

Blog post by Cyprian Nyakundi exposing Du Ying Catic