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| Fredrick Sagwe Onyancha when he appeared in court on Monday, December 10, 2018. He was charged with others for loss of over Sh500 million from NHIF. |
Mr Fredrick Sagwe Onyancha, 39, was Monday described by his friends as a "private man who loves the finer things in life". Those finer things include eight town houses in the upmarket Green Park estate off the road to Mombasa at Athi River, where he lives with his young family.
A modern villa town house at the estate costs upwards of Sh35 million, according to the developer's website.
Mr Onyancha also loves the little creature comforts of the best in cars and is said to own the latest edition of the Toyota Land Cruiser V8 and a Range Rover Sport.
But it is the occasional helicopter rides by the young procurement staffer at the National Hospital Insurance Fund, from Wilson Airport in Nairobi to his home, that have caught the attention of his friends and neighbours, who marvel at his opulence.
TENDER COMMITTEE
He was among those charged with several counts of abuse of office and flouting of procurement procedures in the Sh500 million scandal at the Fund on Monday, but was released on a Sh500,000 bond.
In court, Mr Onyancha cut the image of a lowly suspect. His humble, if not ordinary, demeanour came almost naturally, especially when pitted against the imposing stature of his co-accused, chief executive officer Geoffrey Mwangi and finance director Wilbert Kurgat.
Until 2013, Mr Onyancha was an average middle class Kenyan earning a monthly salary of about Sh150,000. That changed in 2014, when he was picked to join NHIF’s tender evaluation committee.
In Kenyan parastatals, tender evaluation committees usually comprise people from different departments to capture all concerns by users.