They hail from various professional fields – lawyers, accountants, scientists and businessmen.
They are reclusive, and their job descriptions require them to remain discreet in both their professional and personal lives, lest they attract unwarranted attention to their employers’ affairs.
Not many, even in their fields of expertise, can pick them out of the crowd as they are not very well-known.
And yet, they hold the keys to investment vehicles with assets and cash worth billions for some of East Africa’s wealthiest and most politically influential families, along with business as well as domestic secrets that keep the multibillion-shilling empires revving.
In some companies, they are listed as proxy shareholders and directors, in others directors with no shares. Some of them are listed as company secretaries.
For President William Ruto, Charles Tela Alusala has become a crucial cog in the machine that moves the family’s vast and diverse business interests.
Mr Alusala is a trained accountant, who has dedicated a good chunk of his professional life to the audit field.
The first three years of his career, after graduating from Strathmore University, were spent at the National Audit Office, currently the Office of the Auditor-General.
Nearly 15 years after leaving the State institution, he has a presence in several companies owned, wholly or partially, by members of the President’s family.
First Lady Rachel Ruto and her daughter Charlene have steadily become the faces behind their family’s businesses, holding significant shares in companies like Matiny Ltd which also co-owns Weston Hotel, Koilel Farms Ltd which has in the past supplied government institutions with meat and Yegen Farms which aside from rearing chicken also owns a slice of Amaco Insurance.
In many of the family companies, Mr Alusala is listed as the contact person, with his phone number, and postal and email addresses provided.
Mr Alusala’s role as an auditor in the Ruto family’s business empire has also granted him access to secrets of the companies in that ecosystem, as he scrutinizes their books of accounts and offers solutions to problems based on the same documents and interactions with the owners.
Nicholas Ruto, one of the President’s sons, owns one share in Koilel Farm Ltd, the same as his mother, the First Lady.
In the ownership records submitted to the Business Registration Service (BRS), the First Lady uses one of the family’s postal addresses, while Nicholas uses Mr Alusala’s.
At Yegen Farms Ltd, the firm through which the Ruto family owns 190,000 shares or 15 per cent of Amaco Insurance, Mr Alusala is also listed as the contact person.
In the BRS records, the physical address in Nairobi’s city centre listed by Urban Groove Ltd as its own, is Mr Alusala’s.
The First Lady and her daughter Charlene equally own Urban Groove Ltd, a firm founded in November 2022 and which rents out serviced apartments by the same name, targeting the ultra-rich.
Mr Alusala is himself listed as a shareholder of Amaco Insurance, with 100,000 shares or 10.83 per cent of the underwriter. It is unclear whether Mr Alusala owns the shares in his own capacity or as a proxy shareholder.
Charles Victor Orodi, a business administrator by training, is listed as a company secretary in some of the Ruto family firms. Mr Orodi and Lina Kantaria are listed as the Weston Hotel company secretaries.
Mr Orodi reprises the role in Koilel Farm Ltd. He is registered with the Institute of Certified Public Secretaries.
A company secretary is required to ensure regulatory compliance, organize Board meetings and record their minutes, ensure that the company complies with external and internal laws and policies, identify risks and advise the employer on how to resolve them.
The role exposes office holders to some of the most intimate secrets of both the firm and its owners, as those are what he or she uses to help shape policies, ensure compliance and seal risky loopholes that expose the company to losses.
One of Kenya’s biggest family-owned empires has grown significantly since the country’s founding father, Jomo Kenyatta, assumed the Presidency.
At 3 pm on August 22, 1978, the Voice of Kenya’s Nobert Okare and Hassan Mazoa announced to the nation that President Kenyatta, Kenya’s first post-independence leader, had died in his sleep 12 hours earlier.
Across town in State House, Chief Justice James Wicks was swearing in then Vice President Daniel Arap Moi as Head of State
By the time of his death, Mr Kenyatta had risen from an ordinary man eking out a living from odd jobs in London to Kenya’s first President, a Pan-African icon and one of the wealthiest individuals in the region. A handful of companies here, vast pieces of land there and a fortune in his bank accounts. Enough to sustain his family, even if they opted to live the most opulent of lifestyles.
The Nation was able to trace just four companies registered to Jomo Kenyatta’s family at the time of his death – Muthaite Ltd (1975), CBA Mutuya Property Group Ltd (1976), Thathini Holdings Ltd (1978) and New Blueposts Hotels Ltd (1978) – which indicates that Mama Ngina and her children were behind the rapid expansion of enterprise Kenyatta.
But much like the servants that doubled their master’s talents in the Biblical parable, under the stewardship of Mama Ngina Kenyatta, the family has been able to expand what their patriarch left decades ago and grow one of the biggest business empires in the East African region.
At the top of the Kenyatta empire sits Enke Investments, coined by shortening Enterprise Kenyatta. Enke Investments is the parent to over 30 of the companies the family owns.
John Stuart Armitage and Jacob Ogechi Ombongi are the only non-family members that sit on the Enke Investments Board, and they replicate their roles in several other companies under the umbrella.
Both are trained accountants, and also sit on the Board of Enke Management Ltd, the firm that provides various administrative services to other companies under the Kenyatta family umbrella.
It would take you hours to get the photo of John Stuart Armitage, despite him sitting on the board of at least 27 companies belonging to the Kenyattas. The closest his private life has come to the public, is an article in a local daily about a Mr Micheal Armitage, a Kenyan artist whose father is John Stuart Armitage.
Mr Armitage is reportedly married to a Kenyan woman, and the son was born in 1984. Beyond this, information on Armitage is scant. This is the man with the secrets of the Kenyattas’ riches having worked with the family for decades.
Mr Armitage has sat on Boards of, and helped propel, companies like Brookside Dairy, NCBA Bank, affordable housing firm Koto Housing, hospitality service provider Heritage Holdings and other firms in the empire.
The two accountants, and lawyer Jacqueline Mumbi Hinga, are also the silent driving force behind the Kenyatta family’s ambitious Northlands City project in Ruiru, Kiambu County.
Northlands is a satellite city the Kenyatta family is putting up on over 12,000 acres in Ruiru, Kiambu County. The land alone is estimated to be worth nearly Sh500 billion.
The Kenyattas have incorporated at least 18 companies that will provide different services to the estimated 250,000 residents. The 18 Kenyatta subsidiaries, coupled with investments from other corporates will push the total investment well past the trillion-shilling mark.
For the family of the second President of the Republic of Kenya, Daniel Arap Moi, the person with just about all secrets business and otherwise is lawyer Zehrabanu Janmohamed.
The Senior Counsel, aside from being named by the former President as administrator of his vast estate, also holds shares in trust for some family members in companies like Lukiza Ltd, which in turn owns Sosian Energy.
Shaun Zambuni, a Bachelor of Science graduate, sits on Boards of the Siginon Group and its subsidiaries, Sosian Energy, KenCont Logistics, Star Rentals and other companies where the Moi family has interests.
Others who represent the Mois are Mukesh Jamnadas Gohil, Joshua Yator Kerretts and Millicent Chepkirui Ngetich.
The Odinga family has been as active in business as they have been in politics. Although their patriarch Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, and to some extent his son Raila Odinga, dabbled in Marxism, they have since been converted into entrepreneurs with interests in energy, logistics, hospitality and real estate.
Raila Odinga Junior, a son of former Prime Minister Raila, appears to be the face of the family business empire, representing the family in its various firms either as a director or shareholder.
Gladys Jeruto Biamah, Solomon Okeyo Awino and the late John Tolo Otega are some of the outsiders that have featured on the boards of the Odingas’ businesses as company secretaries, but one name seems to have earned a special place in the hearts of the Odingas – Israel Otieno Wasonga Agina.
In February 1969, three years after the then Vice President Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and his Marxist allies fell out with Jomo Kenyatta and formed his own party, the Kenya People’s Union (KPU), a young man of 19 years, Israel Otieno Agina, was charged in a Nairobi court for possessing seditious publications. Mr Agina had been arrested at Odinga’s offices.
Seventeen years later, he was arrested by the administration of then President Daniel Arap Moi by plain clothes police at Agip House. His crimes ranged from giving information to a hostile press” to having links with a 1982 coup attempt. The other detainees with Agina were Raila Odinga, the son of Jaramogi, over whom Agina was arrested in 1969.
Mr Agina and the Odinga’s relationship has been consummated with sweat and blood. The Odingas seem to have rewarded Agina’s loyalty by either sharing their wealth with the businessman or entrusting it to him.
He has six percent of the shares at the East Africa Spectre, the Odingas business that manufactures and revaluates gas cylinders in Central and Eastern Africa. At Spectre International, another Odinga family company that manufactures ethanol and methylated spirits, Mr Agina is listed as a director.
