Damning Revelations Reveals How PS Patrick Mariru Irregularly Awarded Sh42 Billion Bomas Kenya Tender

A BOMBSHELL audit report tabled in Parliament has unmasked how the Ministry of Defence bulldozed through procurement regulations to award a Sh41.9 billion renovation contract for the Bomas of Kenya cultural facility, setting the stage for one of the most explosive accountability showdowns in recent government history.

Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu’s scathing findings, presented through Parliament in the Ministry of Defence’s latest audited accounts, reveal that Principal Secretary Patrick Mariru approved procurement proceedings that had already begun without budgetary authority, in brazen contravention of some of Kenya’s most fundamental public finance laws.

At the heart of the scandal is a damning chronological fact: PS Mariru signed off on the request for direct procurement authorisation on February 17, 2025, four full days after tender invitation documents and a site visit certificate had already been issued on February 13 and 14, 2025. In procurement law, this is not a technicality. It is a crime.

Section 69(2) of the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act of 2015 could not be clearer: no procurement approval shall operate retrospectively to any date earlier than the date on which it is made, except in cases of urgent need. No emergency was declared. No exemption was sought. The ministry simply acted as though the law did not apply.

The audit report states bluntly that the Ministry of Defence was in breach of the law and warns that the government is likely to incur penalties and charges where there is a delay in making payments. That warning carries enormous weight given that the country is already staring down a Sh41.9 billion bill for a project whose financing arrangements remain mired in controversy.

The renovation aims to transform Kenya’s iconic cultural facility into the Bomas International Convention Centre, or BICC, a grand modernised venue with an enhanced seating capacity of up to 11,000 people. But the ambition of the project does not excuse the manner in which it was procured, and auditors are making no bones about it.

No Budget, No Authorisation: A Double Scandal

The procurement irregularity is only one layer of what Gathungu has uncovered. Perhaps even more alarming is the revelation that the renovations were not included in the approved budget of the State Department for Culture, Arts and Heritage, the entity originally mandated to oversee the project, for the 2024/25 financial year. A review of the budget for the State Department revealed that it carried no development budget allocation toward the design, construction and equipping of the BICC.

Under Sections 68 and 149 of the Public Finance Management Act, all accounting officers of public entities are required to ensure that every shilling of expenditure falls within the approved budget for that financial year. Any procurement without an authorised budget is expressly classified as financial misconduct by a public officer. Critically, the law makes these officials personally liable for any losses the government incurs as a result.

Put simply, PS Mariru could be left holding the bill. Not the ministry. Not the taxpayer. Him personally.

The Turkish Firm Ghost That Won’t Go Away

This is not the first time the Bomas renovation has landed the Ministry of Defence in legal quicksand.

In November 2023, the ministry awarded the original renovation tender to Turkish construction firm Summa Turizm Yatirimciligi Anonim Sirketi at Sh31.6 billion. But 329 days later, without ever signing a formal contract, the ministry terminated the award, citing lack of funds and a change in the scope of works.

The Public Procurement Administrative Review Board rejected that move outright, ruling in December 2024 that a public tender can only be cancelled before its award, not after. The ministry then turned to the courts, filing for judicial review at the High Court in January 2025, only to have its case thrown out on procedural grounds as time-barred. An appeal to the Court of Appeal in April 2025 also failed, with a three-judge bench upholding the Turkish firm’s right to the tender.

Having lost in every forum it turned to, the ministry appears to have simply gone ahead and opened a fresh procurement process for what it now calls Phase II of the project, the very process whose approval PS Mariru backdated and which the Auditor-General has now flagged as illegal.

Tourism Fund: Kenya’s Secret Financier Revealed

For months, the source of funding for the Bomas renovation was treated as a state secret so closely guarded that even the Cabinet Secretary for Tourism could not answer parliamentary questions about it. MPs were told it was a security project run by the Kenya Defence Forces and that the details were classified.

It took the outgoing Tourism Fund Board of Trustees chairperson, Samson Some, whose term ended on February 16, 2026, to finally lift the veil in an interview with Nation Media.

Mr Some confirmed that the Tourism Fund was financing Phase II of the renovation through a Public-Private Partnership model, with a percentage of the fund’s annual levy collections committed as repayment to private investors in the project.

But the Auditor-General’s report has now added a new knot to this already tangled financing story. The contract agreement between the parties provided for a repayment plan in nine instalments payable within 24 months. The National Treasury, however, approved a deferred payment plan stretched over 10 years. The two instruments are fundamentally contradictory, and auditors have flagged the inconsistency as a significant red flag.

A Trail of Legal Jeopardy for Mariru

For PS Mariru, the Bomas audit findings arrive at the worst possible moment. The Defence principal secretary is already fighting multiple legal battles on other fronts. The High Court has summoned him personally to explain why he should not be held in contempt over his ministry’s failure to pay former soldiers amounts totalling more than Sh280 million as compensation for torture following the 1982 coup attempt. In one of those cases alone, the sum owed with accrued interest stands at Sh134 million.

In a February 2025 affidavit, Mariru told the court he could not be held accountable for budgetary allocations determined by Parliament, and that the ministry carries a debt pile exceeding Sh4 billion from court decrees it is struggling to settle. That argument now sits in uncomfortable tension with the Auditor-General’s finding that his ministry pressed ahead with a Sh41.9 billion procurement without the budget authority Parliament is supposed to provide.

The Parliamentary Liaison Committee, processing the 2025 Budget Policy Statement, has separately called for a forensic audit of Sh500 million that the Bomas of Kenya management spent on feasibility studies for the renovation project, adding yet another layer of financial scrutiny to a project drowning in accountability questions.

Gachagua’s Prophecy and the Secrecy That Fuelled It

It was former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua who, before his dramatic impeachment, caused a national uproar when he sensationally claimed that the Bomas of Kenya cultural facility had been sold off by the government to a foreign entity. The government denied the claim. But the wall of secrecy that surrounded every aspect of the project, the undisclosed financiers, the classified KDF involvement, the unexplained transfer of procurement responsibility from the Culture Ministry to the Defence Ministry, gifted that narrative room to breathe.

Now that the Auditor-General has pierced that secrecy, what has been laid bare is arguably more troubling than any conspiracy: a systematic disregard for the very laws designed to safeguard public money, carried out at the highest levels of a government ministry.

The Public Investments Committee on Social Services, Administration and Agriculture had previously directed the Auditor-General’s office to monitor the Bomas renovation works and include findings in the next financial year’s report. That monitoring has now produced results that Kenya’s Parliament and the public will find impossible to ignore.