Safaricom reacts to Raila claims

Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore. He has defended the company against allegations by Nasa on results transmission. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • The company is ready to be investigated or prosecuted.
  • Mr Odinga threatened court action against six individuals.

Safaricom Chief Executive Bob Collymore has denied claims by the opposition on transmission of the August 8 elections results.

In a statement issued Tuesday evening, Safaricom said it transmitted the results to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) cloud servers.

“It was IEBC’s responsibility to transmit results from its servers to the tallying centres and this was publicly available information.

"Contrary to what is alleged in the Nasa statement, results from KIEMs kits from Safaricom zones, were transmitted and are on the IEBC web portal,” Mr Collymore said in the statement.

Earlier Tuesday, the National Super Alliance (Nasa) leader Raila Odinga had dragged Safaricom into the election dispute.

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Mr Odinga asked the mobile service provider, which was contracted by IEBC, to explain why it routed results from the polling stations to a server in France and terminated them there instead of transmitting to the electoral commission's server in Kenya.

This, he said, gave room to the manipulation of the poll outcome relayed to the national tallying centre at Bomas in the capital Nairobi.

Mr Odinga threatened court action against six individuals he claimed were part of the scheme he claimed denied him victory.

Nasa, he said, would institute private prosecution against the fingered Safaricom employees.

In his response to the allegations, Mr Collymore said the company was concerned over Nasa’s move to mention its staff saying this had endangered their lives.

“This action is callous and unnecessary,” the CEO said adding that the company is ready to be investigated or prosecuted.

He said the company discharged its contractual obligations "strictly in accordance with the contract and the law."