How Akasha ally planned to open multi-billion-shilling drug factory in coast

They had come as tourists, but their mission was different. The man they had come to meet was a billionaire who owns a private jet and chain of hotels in Dubai.

That police in India are now investigating how an international drug cartel wanted to set up a factory in Mombasa to manufacture party drug crystal meth, known for its highly addictive stimulant properties, is going to be the stuff that runs in Hollywood movies.

But the matter is deeper than this and is currently a running story.

Already, they want to extradite Vijaygiri Anandgiri Goswami to India, an ally of the Akasha brothers, whom they describe as the alleged kingpin of an international drug mafia that wanted to set up the multi-billion shilling business in Kenya. But Goswami, 56, has already started fighting, even before those orders reach Nairobi.

“(Indian) Police is trying to frame me under pressure from the US. Don’t be surprised if someday I am kidnapped and taken to the US,” he told India’s Mail Today last week.

Goswami, known in India as Vicky Goswami, is currently held in Kenya where he is facing extradition proceedings in a Mombasa court after the US applied for his arrest and extradition. The Americans accuse Goswami and the Akasha brothers—Ibrahim and Baktash—and a Pakistani Gulam Hussein, of orchestrating large scale shipments of heroin weighing several hundred kilogrammes and worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. They are currently out on a Sh30 million bail.

The Akashas are the sons of Ibrahim Abdalla Akasha, a notorious wealthy Kenyan drug kingpin shot dead by a gunman on a motorcycle in Amsterdam 16 years ago. Akasha was then being sought in connection with the seizure of several tonnes of hashish in Mombasa and had escaped the police dragnet.

While Goswami and co were arrested during a sting operation at Akasha’s Nyali mansion in Mombasa in 2014 with the assistance of US anti-narcotics authority, attempts to finalise their extradition orders to the US have stalled. One of those arrested says he does not understand English and attempts to get a Farsi translator has become the latest handicap to the case. A translator from the Iran Embassy recently withdrew after a single appearance claiming that he had been threatened. Gulam says he can only converse in Farsi, one of the Persian languages.

But it is the Rs 2000 crore (Sh13.4 billion) 20 tonnes drug haul in India—thought to have been earmarked for the proposed Kenyan factory that has sent some shockwaves in India.

‘BEEN HELD’

In January, this year, a meeting is alleged to have been held between Goswami and the men at the centre of the saga—Kishore Rathod, son of a former Indian legislator, Jay Mukhi and Manoj Jain—at an exclusive resort club in Nyali, Mombasa. Police in India have told the press that they believe that the two Akasha brothers were in that meeting plus a Dr Abdullah, the man who was to set up the factory.

According to Parambir Singh, a Mumbai metropolitan commissioner of police, handling the case, the Kenyan meeting was held on January 8, 2016 while a second meeting was held at Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the tallest structure in the world. But this was not attended by Vicky Goswami and his Akasha friends who are restricted from travelling. However, it was attended by Goswami’s girlfriend, a famous Bollywood actor and socialite, Mamta Kurkani. She had been arrested with the Akashas and later set free.

Singh told the press in India: “During the investigation, we found that 100kg ephedrine was supplied to Vicky Goswami recently through an aircraft with the help of an agent from Mohammed Ali road. Also, the 1,300 kg ephedrine seized in Gujarat (in April) was to be sent to Kenya through ship”.

In a recent interview with an Indian newspaper, Goswami does not deny attending the Mombasa meeting with the accused. But he says that the discussion centred on gold.

“I met Manoj in January, he was talking about the gold. You know you can get gold in Congo, Tanzania and Kenya. So, he asked if I could procure gold for him. You can get gold here at a reasonable rate and that is what he was talking about,” said Goswami. “Anybody can come and visit me. This doesn’t mean I do business with them.”

But police believe that the discussion was on how to process the party drug from Mombasa and supply to other African countries.

But who is Manoj? The man is the director of an Indian company, Avon Lifesciences, where the 23 tonnes Ephedrine was found. The discovery was simply a fluke.

In April this year, police in India arrested a Nigerian drug peddler, 30-year-old Okoyo Chinnas, who was trying to sell Ephedrine. His arrest led the Mumbai police to Manoj’s Avon Lifesciences where they discovered the drug haul. It was during interrogation that police learnt that the ephedrine was destined for Kenya where it would have been cooked into meth.

In its legal form, ephedrine is used to treat asthma and bronchitis under controlled dosage. It is also used in controlled dosages in making cough syrups.

CAUSE NAUSEA

But drug dealers have also been cooking it into powder form and it is said to cause nausea and euphoria. It is also synthesised to produce the narcotic drug, crystal meth, also known as methamphetamine.

It is now emerging that the controlled substance used to make medicine was being diverted from the company and sent to Kenya-based drug cartels headed by Goswami.

In September, 2013, police in Ruiru discovered a small factory that was producing methamphetamine and they arrested two Indians, two Tanzanians and three Kenyans and they also arrested a woman who was transporting methamphetamine worth Sh80 million from Kampala to Mombasa. Last year, two Kenyans were arrested with 3kg of the drug worth Sh24 million. Whether this was connected with the Indian company is still not clear.

In the last one year, Indian police are now claiming, police also said the Kenya-based Goswami had met Kishore Rathod, son of a former legislator, more than 20 times.

While police say Kurkani is Goswami’s wife—he has denied this and described her as a “well-wisher”.

“When I was in trouble, she stood by me," he said. "People are talking rubbish about her. They don’t know what a kind soul she is. Why are people calling me Mamta Kulkarni’s husband? What husband? I swear I was never married to her. All they want is masala so that they can make a Bollywood potboiler on drug racket...”

Now based in Nairobi, Kurkani has always defended Goswami against drug accusations. But police now believe that she owned shares at Anon Lifescience on behalf of Goswami, a man who rose from a small-time drug pusher and liquor supplier to an international drug dealer operating in both Kenya and Tanzania.

Police in India claim that some 100kg of ephedrine was recently sent by air cargo from India to Kenya and the money transferred to Manoj Jain’s account.

Goswami, according to Indian police records, is a master drug dealer. In the 1990s, he managed to send several large black suitcases from Mumbai International Airport to Cape Town, South Africa. These suitcases—at least five every day —were never accompanied and would be put in the cargo by airport workers and the luggage tags would be faxed to South Africa where the mandrax would be picked. Police later identified Goswami as the kingpin, according to Indian papers.

“Each bag had nearly a thousand tablets of Mandrax. We laid a trap several times but no one ever accompanied these bags,” an officer who was then part of the Anti-Narcotics Cell that investigated the trafficking told an Indian newspaper.

COVER BLOWN

It was not until his arrest in Mombasa that Goswami’s cover was finally blown and his allies in Kenya identified.

Both Jain and Kishore, the man Goswani met in Mombasa, have been arrested. But Goswami now says that police in India are wrong to claim that they had met several times in Kenya. “They can check his passport and his immigration checkout. If they are saying 20 times, they are lying... I met him around December-January. They had come on a holiday. They came to enjoy here in Kenya. These allegations are baseless.”

Once jailed for 15 years in Dubai, Goswami thinks that the Mumbai police are “working under pressure” from the US. He thinks he is being victimised. “I was in Dubai prison for over 15 years. I became a victim of discrimination. Our embassy knew about it. Our foreign ministry knew about it also. Some unknown people are trying to destroy me,” Goswami told an Indian newspaper.

The Indian Express newspaper has also reported that Kenya’s Akasha brothers, who took over their father’s drug empire, could also be named during the trial and that police were awaiting certain confirmations before they are formally identified in the charge sheet.

“We have intelligence that these two were Bakhtash Akasha and Ibrahim Akasha. We didn’t identify them in the charge-sheet as we want another confirmation,” a senior officer is quoted as saying in the paper.

Vicky, as they call him in Mumbai, had been introduced into this trade by an Indian kingpin, Bipin Panchal and that is how he started supplying mandrax.

As his empire raked in money, he moved to Mumbai and found a good market in Bollywoood—India’s version of Hollywood—and he befriended many film-stars as he built a solid underworld business. That is when he befriended Kulkarmi.

It was in 1997 that Goswami arrived in Dubai to open a chain of hotels accompanied by India’s who is who in the movie world.

“The stars were reported to have returned to India with lavish “return gifts” like mobile phones, then rare, and cars. There were rumours of several stars approaching Vicky for expensive gifts,” according to one Indian journalist.

But Goswami, a trained pilot, was not lucky and was arrested and jailed for 25 years. That is how he spent 15 years in jail.

In a recent interview with India’s Aaj Tak, Kulkarni said Goswami’s arrest in Dubai was over a family dispute. Kulkarni also said Goswami and her were “trying to establish” their business of imported food commodities.

After his release, Goswami headed to Kenya where he found solace with the Akasha family together with the Bollywood film star. In October, 2014, Goswami was arrested along with the Akasha brothers, Ibrahim and Bakhtash, by the local anti-narcotics unit in Kenya and charged with conspiracy to traffic narcotic drugs to the US and in Kenya.

The Kenyan authorities also agreed to the US request for extradition of the accused so that they could be tried in a New York court.

How this case develops will expose the drug networks that have been operating between Kenya and India. On July 15, Goswami’s lawyers failed to stop Indian journalists from covering their Mombasa case.

[email protected]; @johnkamau1