The Vice Chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta University of Science Agriculture and Technology yesterday admitted that the university lost Sh27 Million to a director of its Rwanda campus.
Prof. Mabel Imbuga reported to the National Assembly Public Investments Committee how the director Anthony Luvanda swindled them out of the money under the pretense of purchasing land for the Kigali campus.
Reports say that Mr Luvanda got the money from an irregular Sh18 Million loan facility taken from I&M Bank Rwanda and some Sh9 Million fees collected from students and went underground in November after the theft.
The VC told the committee that the university had approved the purchasing of the land for its Kigali campus but not the loan facility from the bank to finance the buying of the land.
Luvanda is said to have secretly approached the bank for a loan while the university was pursuing requisite Ministry of Education approvals, then he disappeared shortly after getting the loan.
Last month, a parliamentary watchdog launched investigations into how Kenyatta University and JKUAT invested millions of shillings in setting up campuses in Rwanda and Tanzania after the chief executive officer of the Commission of University Education Prof David Some said the setting up of campuses outside Kenya were not approved by the commission.
However, the two universities in April received consents from the Ministry of Education and the National Treasury to set up campuses in Rwanda and Tanzania with both using about Sh450 million to set up campuses in the two countries.