Kel Chemicals CEO Links Presidential Officials to Fake Fertilizer Scandal
The top executives of Kel Chemicals, the company involved in the ongoing fake fertilizer investigation by Parliament, have accused high-ranking government officials of being involved in the scandal.
During his appearance before the National Assembly’s Agriculture Committee, Devesh Patel, the COO of Kel Chemicals, implicated top government officials from the Office of the President, the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS), and the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) in the controversy.
Patel informed the Committee about an important meeting he reportedly took part in with high-ranking public officials just before his unexpected arrest. He claimed he was taken into custody at a police station after the meeting ended abruptly.
“While giving my statement, Ms. Esther Ngari kept interrupting me saying that I was making substandard fertilizer. She said she’d close our factories and told Mr. Felix Koskei to punish us,” he said.
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“Thereafter, Koskei did not finish listening to me and instead asked some police to arrest me together with Collins Ng’etich and take me to the DCI headquarters in Kiambu. I was arrested without being informed of the reasons for my arrest, no representation from counsel and I wrote my statement while under duress. I was later released on a 100,000 police bond”.
Patel also claimed that he was forced to write a letter confessing that they had manufactured and distributed counterfeit fertilizer while he was held in police custody.
“I was forced to write a letter indicating that I had recalled the batches of fertilizer,” he said.
The serious accusations from Patel were made just a week after an inspection of Kel Chemical’s factory, which was then shut down by Agriculture CS Mithika Linturi due to its suspected connection to the fake fertilizer controversy.
Kel Chemicals CEO Links Presidential Officials to Fake Fertilizer Scandal