Activists petition court to supervise Sh4.4bn China roads ‘theft’ dossier
Integrity Centre that hosts Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) offices in Nairobi.
An anti-corruption court in Nairobi has been presented with a rare petition that may unearth massive theft of money given to Kenya from China in the form of infrastructure loans between 2020 and 2022.
The court has been given a 24-page dossier that is backed with audio-visual evidence. Activists who presented it want a simple action — that the court becomes the supervisor of the document because they are being intimidated through various ways for revealing how at least $30 million (Sh4.4 billion) given through China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) was stolen in a scheme masterminded by an elusive Briton.
The activists also want the claims raised in the paper be interrogated, the findings be made public then it be handed to the court.
In a case that may evoke memories of the Anglo-Leasing scandal, there are recordings of confessions, screenshots among other forms of evidence provided to the court. The dossier had been sent to various State agencies on August 15.
A key cog of the dossier is an accountant who used to work with the alleged corruption masterminds who has quietly turned into a whistle-blower, recording conversations and extracting documents explaining the complex web of theft.
The dossier talks of cash carried around in US dollars and invested in various high-value projects. It mentions Kenyan mules whose names were used to open briefcase companies.
It also fingers a local bank it says was involved in most of the transactions and brings up the issue of stuffing cash in offshore accounts and mentions police being used to intimidate those who wanted to disrupt the scheme. It highlights efforts to buy silence using loads of cash.
Now, some introductions.
The activists who presented the petition are Musaari Kahiga Syong’oh and Alvin Nzomo Muthami. They are attached to a global activists’ group called the Agency for Global Veracity and Growth (AGVG).
They were alerted by the accountant-turned-whistle-blower then started following up the matter. They tell the court that they were arrested earlier this year and their laptops and phones confiscated.
“The petitioners luckily had a backup and have now completed their investigations and their forensic report shows a looting of approximately (documented) USD 30 million,” they stated in their August 24 petition to the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Division of the High Court.
The man to whom the activists are pointing an accusing finger is a United Kingdom citizen of Indian origin, and say he belongs to a family that was involved in high-profile graft in the 1990s. His former accountant is the whistle-blower.
The respondents in the case are Attorney-General, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), the Inspector-General of Police, the Financial Reporting Centre, the Assets Recovery Agency, and the Office of the Auditor-General.
So, what did the two activists tell the court? In a petition filed on August 24 by their lawyer Wahome Njagi, they said that after receiving a tip from the accountant, they embarked on their investigations.
“The petitioners received information from the accountant of a scheme involving allegations of siphoning of public funds by Kenyan companies from infrastructure projects being undertaken by Chinese entities funded with loans from the People’s Republic of China,” the lawyer stated.
“They commenced investigations and received documentary proof of the complex web of corruption and how the siphoned funds were flighted outside the country from whistle-blower who worked as an accountant with the alleged architect,” he added.
The activists further told the court that the Briton used his employees “to open companies where funds would be sent and immediately rerouted to other companies (then) converted to US dollars for flighting to various jurisdictions. They allege that the suspects in the scheme used the DCI to intimidate them.
As such, they are apprehensive that their report “will not be investigated or acted upon unless this court supervises the same”.
“The petitioners have no faith in the investigative authority, more so the DCI who have been in the know and, having been compromised by the actors of this grand corruption, have done nothing,” the lawyer wrote.
“It is important in the public interest and to protect the petitioners from further intimidation that the court exercises its supervisory role and order for the report by the petitioner be investigated and findings be made public and delivered to this court,” the lawyer states.
Yesterday, Mr Njagi, the activists’ lawyer, told the Nation that the case will be mentioned before Justice Esther Maina on September 21. The activists also held a press conference in Nairobi yesterday, where they asked the Press to help amplify the alleged theft.
In their dossier, the activists provide charts showing the flow of cash and say that more could have been lost in past projects involving CCCC and other Chinese firms. They say that it is the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) that burst the syndicate’s bubble.
“All was well within the crime syndicate until hawk-eyed KRA officers who refused the organised crime syndicate’s overtures to accept bribes went ahead to carry out their constitutional mandate,” the activists say.
“As a money mule, the accountant and several other money mules (including the Briton’s tea boy, a computer repair man amongst others including their wives) … were being indicted [by KRA] and rightfully so, for the loss of Sh1.3 billion in tax revenue,” they add.
“In a shocking revelation, this macabre economic larceny that cost the Kenyan taxpayer over Sh7 billion was carried out from concept, design, and application by foreign nationals, some of whom had acquired citizenry as late as the year 2016. All criminal actors were from the private sector. The scheme was structured like the infamous mid-90s ‘Goldenberg Scandal’ where private citizens were paid for delivery of air,” the dossier says.
“Though this paper covers only the loss of [money between September 2020 and September 2022], AGVG firmly believes that over the last 15 years, the said ‘private sector actors’ of foreign nationality might have already cost Kenya over $3 billion in foreign currency flight,” they say.
Also mentioned in the dossier are top officials at the China Road and Bridge Company (CRBC), North China Power Engineering (Kenya) Company, and the Cale Infrastructure Construction Company.
The activists mention issuance of fictitious bills as the main way through which “raw development funds from infrastructure projects across the country” were stolen.
They say there was “raising fictitious purchases and delivery notes to support payment for inexistent goods and services so as to rob the Kenyan taxpayer and the government of monies being paid for vide expensive loans”.
