Joyce Teresia Akinyi Ochieng'.
For years, Joyce Teresia Akinyi Ochieng' has been making news in and out of the country for all the wrong reasons.
From spending time in an Indian prison to publicly accusing her ex-husband of being a wanted drug trafficker to being deported back to Nigeria, Ms Akinyi has been through it all, but it seems her luck has finally run out.
On Friday, after almost five years of trial, she was found guilty of drug trafficking.
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) said in a statement that Ms Akinyi and two of her accomplices were found guilty in the high-profile drug trafficking case after the prosecution team led by Norah Achieng’, Annette Wangia and Faith Mwila presented compelling evidence linking her to a sophisticated transnational narcotics operation.
The case was prosecuted at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) courts.
“The prosecution team, represented by Norah Achieng’, Annette Wangia, and Faith Mwila, presented evidence showing that Joyce Akinyi, together with her accomplices Paulin Kalala (a Congolese national) and Peres Ochieng’, were the masterminds of a well-orchestrated transnational drug trafficking scheme,” part of the statement read.
The DPP further said that Ms Akinyi was also convicted of being in possession of a passport without a reasonable explanation.
“The accused was in possession of a passport that was not issued to her by the government of Kenya,” DPP explained.
According to the DPP, the judgment was entered in the absence of Peres Ochieng’ who absconded court when she was placed on her defence.
The sentence will be delivered on December 10, 2024.
In 2019, Ms Akinyi and her co-accused were arrested by anti-narcotics police officers after being allegedly found in possession of 2 kilograms of heroin at Deep West Bar in Nairobi West.
They were taken to Muthaiga Police Station and later brought before JKIA Law Courts, where they faced charges of drug trafficking for being in possession of drugs valued at Sh5,588,580, in violation of Section 4(a) of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Control Act of 1994.
They were also charged with being in possession of forged passports from the Democratic Republic of Congo, contrary to Section 54(1)(c) of the Kenya Citizenship and Immigration Act No. 12 of 2011.
The following year, the High Court ordered the seizure of two vehicles belonging to the suspect.
Justice Mumbi Ngugi ordered Ms Akinyi, who shot to fame over a fight for property with Nigerian Anthony Chinedu, to surrender the two vehicles and their logbooks to the DCI headquarters on Kiambu Road.
In the petition certified as urgent, the Assets Recovery Agency also tabled activities in her two bank accounts between 2015 and 2018, pointing to alleged illegal activities.
The documents show that she opened the accounts at Stanbic Bank in 2015 and on November 10, 2015, deposited Sh20 million in one of the accounts and withdrew Sh7.7 million within 10 days. There were subsequent deposits totalling about Sh20.7 million.
In the second account, the agency said Ms Akinyi deposited about Sh50 million between January 7, 2015 and September 21, 2018.
Withdrew Sh20 million
A huge deposit of Sh37.7 million was made on October 28 2015 and she withdrew part of the money including Sh20 million on November 10, 2015.
“That my investigations established that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the assets in issue are proceeds of crime through illegitimate trade in narcotic drug substance conducted by the respondent and has not given a reasonable explanation to prove any legitimate source of income,” Mr Fredrick Muriuki, an investigator said.
In the application, ARA pleaded with the court to order the preservation of the vehicles, arguing that there are reasons to believe they are proceeds of crime.
The vehicles are two Toyotas- a KCR 521Z and KCG 856G bought in October 2016 and January 2018, respectively.
The court ordered the Director General of the National Transport and Safety Authority to place a caveat against the records of the two motor vehicles.
This was not her first arrest, Ms Akinyi has been arrested many times in and out of the country.
In 2008, she was arrested with the then Budalang'i MP Raphael Wanjala at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi Airport on allegations that they were part of a money laundering racket.
Police found the equivalent of Sh7.5 million in US dollars on them. India requires one to declare amounts of money above Sh375,000.
What made matters worse for the two was that when they tried to feed the details of Ms Akinyi’s travel documents into prison computers, they did not match those supplied by Kenyan authorities, raising suspicion that she was travelling under an alias.
After further investigation, police in New Delhi established that Ms Akinyi and Mr Wanjala had left Kenya through Uganda and flown to India from Dubai aboard an Emirates flight.
They also established that they had indeed been using a passport bearing another name.
After a month’s stay in prison, Indian authorities cancelled the bail the two were granted and took them back to Tihar Prison, India’s second-largest, where they stayed for five months before Nairobi intervened.
In 2013, Ms Akinyi and Mr Wanjala were again arrested in Isinya along the Nairobi-Namanga highway on claims of drug trafficking.
They were released after insisting they were carrying maize flour that they had imported from Tanzania.
In 2015, detectives once again arrested Ms Akinyi and three others after finding them with a suspicious powder but they were later released.
Ms Akinyi came into the limelight after she was involved in multiple public squabbles with her estranged husband, Nigerian businessman Antony Chinedu.
The parents of the two, who formalised their marriage in 2004, owned the then-popular Deep West Restaurant off Nairobi’s Lang’ata Road among other investments.
Three years later, the Nigerian moved to court seeking to divorce Ms Akinyi over cruelty, adultery and desertion of their marital home.
Mr Chinedu, who had been in the country for 15 years, shot into the limelight in 2008 as a wealthy but esoteric tycoon embroiled in a bitter battle for property worth millions of shillings with Ms Akinyi.
Sh300 million property
In his suit, the Nigerian accused Budalang'i MP Wanjala of flirting with his estranged wife and annexing his Sh300 million property, claims that the legislator denied.
The acrimony between the couple played out as an embarrassing case of love gone sour with Ms Akinyi at one point referring to Mr Chinedu as a “drug lord wanted in Pakistan” and warning him that he would eventually be defeated.
Mr Wanjala, suddenly thrust into the limelight, stepped out of the shadows and declared his love for Ms Akinyi.
The courts had no option but to grant Mr Chinedu his prayers and Ms Akinyi went straight into the MP's arms.
However, the walls started caving in on the Nigerian in April 2013 when he was arrested and charged with being in possession of 10 grams of a narcotic substance.
As his case dragged on in court, former President Uhuru Kenyatta, announcing a no-nonsense approach by his government to narcotics, ordered the deportation of all foreigners suspected of engaging in drug trafficking.
Mr Chinedu was deported to Nigeria in June 2013 on suspicion of being a drug trafficker.
