Inside the Grand Looting of Marsabit: Governor Ali and Wife Alamitu Accused of Stealing Ksh728 Million From the County

The windswept hills of Marsabit hide more than just desert secrets. Beneath the veneer of county development, investigators say a web of corruption has drained over Ksh728 million from public coffers allegedly orchestrated by none other than Governor Mohamud Ali and his wife, Alamitu Guyo Jattan.

The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) has completed a damning probe that details how companies linked to the first family of Marsabit secured multimillion-shilling contracts under questionable circumstances, benefiting directly from public funds meant for healthcare, water, roads, and other basic services.

At the centre of the storm is Burqa Ventures Limited, a firm investigators believe is secretly controlled by Mrs. Jattan.

Through this entity alone, the governor is said to have pocketed over Ksh156 million.

The EACC report, now in the hands of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP), paints a chilling picture of systemic looting under the watch and alleged direction of the county’s top leadership.

Investigators say tenders were awarded without competitive bidding to firms that had close ties to Governor Ali and his allies.

In addition to Burqa Ventures, companies like Ororo Company Limited and M/S Damme Investment Construction Company Limited run by proxies such as Huka Wako Bidhu and Rukia Abduba Salesa received contracts worth Ksh123 million. Bidhu is a county employee, a clear conflict of interest that the report says was never disclosed.

Money from these contracts didn’t just disappear into faceless companies.

Traces of it flowed through M-Pesa transactions and bank accounts, some ending up with the governor’s wife and his personal assistant. A forensic trail shows Ksh2.4 million transferred to Jattan by Bidhu alone small fragments of a larger scheme that siphoned public resources into private hands.

The EACC has proposed 13 criminal charges, ranging from conspiracy to commit corruption to unlawful acquisition of public property.

It has also recommended recovering illegally paid salaries to Bidhu, whose employment status and role in county procurement raise serious legal questions.

The weight of the evidence spanning seven years of budgetary documents, CBK records, witness testimonies, and mobile money statements is now with the ODPP.

But whether the case sees the inside of a courtroom remains uncertain. Sources close to the investigation warn of political interference, the kind that has historically derailed graft prosecutions involving governors and their networks.

Governor Ali is not alone in this mire. He joins a growing list of county bosses under investigation, including Nairobi’s Johnson Sakaja, Kiambu’s Kimani Wamatangi, and Uasin Gishu’s Jonathan Bii Chelilim.

While the faces change, the script remains the same: shadowy tenders, shell companies, insider dealings, and a trail of stolen billions.

In a county where drought, insecurity, and underdevelopment remain daily struggles, the alleged theft of Ksh728 million is more than a financial crime it’s a betrayal of trust, a robbery of hope.

And unless justice catches up, Marsabit may just be another forgotten headline in Kenya’s endless cycle of county corruption.