It has emerged that former Economic Planning Minister Tom Mboya was a financially limping man during the time of his murder on July 5, 1969.
According to Fitz De Souza, then lawyer to President Jomo Kenyatta, Mboya was always short of funds and had grown into a bother to many.
He says that Mboya was always ringing people close to him to borrow and beg for money, among them himself (Fitz), who, however, repeatedly turned him down as he was not in a position to lend him money at the time.
"It was 1969, and Tom, increasingly short of funds, was begging and borrowing. He would ring me quite often to ask for a loan, but I had nothing to spare," he says in his new book; Forward To Independence.
Ironically, this came only three years after the latter was swimming in money, being part of the team that stage-managed elections on behalf of Kenyatta and his allies.
Fitz says that in 1966, Mboya was deployed to handle a number of by-elections, most of which Kenyatta's KANU won controversially, thanks to Mboya and his millions from Americans.
He says that he came face to face with such in Tigoni, where Mboya was having money in briefcases, allegedly part of the monies given to him by the American embassy to rig elections.
"Tom Mboya, always a brilliant organiser, did everything, and behind him were the Americans and their money. I remember Tom once asking me to fetch something from the boot of his car and making a point of telling me not to disturb anything else there. But curiosity got the better of me, and I looked in a suitcase and found it packed with several thousand dollars," he said.
He says that more money came from Kenyatta and his government, as the latter and the US government wanted KANU fully in charge amid the Kenya People's Union (KPU) onslaught.
Mboya was felled by two bullets from Nahashon Njenga's gun while leaving a chemist along Government Road, Njenga was later hanged after being convicted with the murder.