Nims

The Grand Regency Scandal broke loose in June 2008. The Central Bank of Kenya was alleged to have secretly sold a luxury hotel in Nairobi to an unidentified group of Libyan investors for more than 4 billion Kenyan Shillings way below the appraised market value. The then Finance Minister Amos Kimunya had negotiated the sale, and was censured in a near-unanimous motion by the Parliament of Kenyan, though he vehemently denied the charges.

This follows on the heels of the Safaricom IPO, overseen by Kimunya, which has been alternatively praised and questioned for possible corruption in the execution of the sale. Safaricom was and still is the largest mobile phone service provider in Kenya. Having operated with a near-government monopoly for many years. The government of Kenya sold its 50% stake in Safaricom in the IPO.

WikiLeaks released documents in September 2007 exposing a 500 million Kenyan shilling payroll fraud at Egerton University as well as the subsequent cover up. The matter was a subject of an ongoing legal dispute in the High Court for sometime. Was the money recovered if at all the allegations were true? Details of this case remain scanty upto date.

The parliament on 2007-09-06 passed the Statutory Law (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill, restricting Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission from investigating offences committed prior to May 2003. The Goldenberg, Anglo-Leasing scandals and other major cases were exempted from this restriction. This move was not received well by the anti-corruption campaigners; The former chief executive of the Transparency International Kenya Chapter, Mwalimu Mati, declared that “grand corruption has swallowed the government and parliament that Kenyans elected to fight it in 2002”. This move sparked a public outrage as well and the then president, Mwai Kibaki announced that he was going to veto the bill.

The Guardian newspaper featured on 31 August 2007 reported that about more than 1 billion sterling pounds had been transferred out of Kenya by the family and associates linked to the then former Kenyan leader Daniel arap Moi. The information was sourced from the WikiLeaks article titled; The looting of Kenya under President Moi and its analysis of a leaked investigative document popularly known as, “the Kroll report” prepared for the Kibaki government in 2004 to try to recover money stolen during Moi’s regime.

This happenned in November 2006. The national government was accused of failing to do something on a banking fraud scam worth $1.5bn involving money laundering and tax evasion. The scan had been reported by whistle-blowers as early as 2004 but it didn’t seem to get the attention it needed byt the Government.

Investigators believed sums worth 10% of Kenya’s national income were involved. An auditor’s report claimed the scale of the operations were enough to threaten the stability of the Kenyan economy.

The Standard  Newspaper ran a story late Feb 2006 claiming that president Mwai Kibaki and senior opposition figure Kalonzo Musyoka had been holding secret meetings. On 2 March at around 1:00 am local time, masked gunmen carrying AK-47s raided multiple editorial offices of The Standard, and of its television station KTN. The staff members were beat up, forcibly took computers and transmission equipment, burned all the copies of the 2 March edition of the newspaper, and damaged equipment.

They shut down the power, putting the station off the air. Initially, the Kenyan information minister claimed no knowledge of the raid, but it was since revealed that Kenyan police were responsible. The Ministry of the Internal Security later claimed that the incident was to safeguard state security. “If you rattle a snake you must be prepared to be bitten by it,”  were the exact words of John Michuki.

Three journalists at The Standard were arrested after the critical story was printed. The story now also features the bizarre case of two Armenian businessmen, alias Mercenaries, were mocked in the press for their taste for heavy gold chains, watches and rings. The then opposition claimed the two led the raid and had shady dealings with Kibaki’s government.

This scandal was captured in the report realesed in February 2006 by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) and the local chapter of Transparency International. The report uncovered that between January 2003 and September 2004, the National Rainbow Coalition government spent about $12-million on cars that were mostly for the personal use of senior government officials. The vehicles included 57 Mercedes-Benz, as well as Land Cruisers, Mitsubishi Pajeros, Range Rovers, Nissan Terranos and Nissan Patrols.

The $12-million was way above what the government spent over the 2003/04 financial year on controlling malaria – “the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Kenya”, says the report. Posing the question, does lives of the ‘Common Mwananchi‘ really matter?

Popularly know by many as the Anglo Leasing scandal. The Anglo Leasing is the company behind the deal. In this particular deal, the government wanted to buy a sophisticated £20 Million passport equipment system from France to replace the old passport printing system.

The transaction was originally quoted at 6 million euros from François Charles Oberthur of Paris (a supplier of Visa and MasterCards) but was however controversially awarded to a British firm, the Anglo-Leasing and Finance Company Limited, at 30 million euros. This is more than twice the initial quote, Anglo Leasing would have easily sub-contracted the same French firm to do the work and keep the profit. Despite the lack of competitive tendering Anglo Leasing was paid a “commitment fee” of more than £600,000 in advance.

Anglo Leasing’s agent was a Liverpool-based firm, Saagar Associates, owned by a 47-year-old Kenyan woman, Mrs Sudha Ruparell, whose family enjoyed close links with senior officials in the Moi regime. Ruparell is the daughter of Chamanlal Kamani, the multimillionaire patriarch of a business family that enjoyed close links with senior officials in the Moi regime as well. No wonder Kamani is involved in the The supply of Mahindra Jeeps scandal as well as the Deal to Build a CID Forensic Laboratory.

Suddenly, on 14 May 2004, Anglo Leasing and Finance Ltd refunded the Kenyan government 95 million Kenyan shillings from a Swiss bank for the project above. The ‘refund’ issued by Anglo Leasing was as a blessing to some government officials. It was the leverage they needed to try to stop investigations into the scandal.

Another scandal involved the construction of Nexus, a secret military communication centre in Karen. A total sum of Sh2.6 billion was spent towards the construction of the complex. Three years after the project had been commisioned, the military personnel had not moved into the centre.

A phantom company, Nedermar BV Technologies, based in Netherlands, implemented the secret project situated along Karen South Road. This company, Nedermar is linked to businessman Anura Pereira, the same person involved in the Euromarine Navy Ship Deal. However, Pereira denied being involved in this deal. The tendering process for the secret military project was circumvented at DoD’s Departmental Tender Committee. The project was funded through the Ministry of Transport and Communications.

The inistial purpose for the Nexus secret millitary site was to serve as an ammunition dumpsite before it was turned into a military communication and operations centre. Construction continued without any site visits by either the DoD staff or Ministry of Public Works officials. The Nexus project was implemented during the tenure of General Joseph Kibwana.

The Prisons department lost $3 million, aproximately three hundred and two million Kenyan shillings, after contracting Hallmark International, a company associated with Deepak Kamani of Kamsons Motors, for the supply of 30 boilers. Kamsons Motors is the same company mentioned in the supply of Mahindra Jeeps scandal. Only half of the boilers were delivered – from India and not the United States as had been agreed.