Petition Seeks Court Oversight for Alleged Sh4.4bn China Roads Scandal
A rare petition has been presented to an anti-corruption court in Nairobi that may uncover significant theft of Chinese infrastructure loans given to Kenya between 2020 and 2022.
The court has been provided with a 24-page dossier supported by audiovisual evidence. The activists who presented it are being intimidated for revealing how at least $30 million (Sh4.4 billion) given through China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) was stolen in a scheme orchestrated by an enigmatic British national.
The activists want the claims made in the paper to be investigated, the results to be made public, and then the document to be submitted to the court.
In a case that may evoke memories of the Anglo-Leasing scandal, the court has been presented with confession recordings, photographs, and other forms of evidence.
On August 15, the dossier was sent to numerous State agencies. A key component of the dossier is a former accountant who worked with the alleged masterminds of corruption and has discreetly become a whistleblower, recording conversations and extracting documents that explain the intricate theft web.
The dossier discusses dollars carried around and invested in numerous high-value initiatives. There are references to Kenyan couriers whose names were used to establish briefcase companies.
It also implicates a local bank in the majority of transactions, raises the issue of stashing cash in offshore accounts, and mentions the use of police to intimidate those who sought to disrupt the scheme. It highlights efforts to purchase silence with large sums of money.
Now, introduce yourself. The petition was presented by Musaari Kahiga Syong’oh and Alvin Nzomo Muthami, two activists. They are associated with the Agency for Global Veracity and Growth (AGVG), a global activist organization.
They began investigating the matter after the accountant-turned-whistleblower alerted them to it. They informed the court that they were apprehended and their laptops and cell phones were confiscated earlier this year.
In a petition filed on August 24 to the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Division of the High Court, the petitioners stated, “The petitioners had a backup and have now concluded their investigations and their forensic report indicates a looting of approximately USD 30 million”
The individual at whom the activists are pointing an accusatory finger is a British citizen of Indian descent, and he allegedly comes from a family involved in high-profile corruption in the 1990s. His erstwhile accountant has blown the whistle.
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 are the respondents in this case.
What did the two activists say to the judge? In a petition filed on August 24 by their attorney Wahome Njagi, they stated that they began their investigations after receiving a report from the accountant.
“The petitioners received information from the accountant about a scheme involving allegations of the 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 attorney explained.
“A whistleblower who worked as an accountant for the alleged architect provided documentary evidence of the complex web of corruption and how the siphoned funds were transferred out of the country,” he added.
The activists also told the court that the Briton used his employees to “open companies where funds were sent and immediately rerouted to other companies (then converted to U.S. dollars) for flighting to various jurisdictions.” They claim that the scheme perpetrators intimidated them using the DCI. Consequently, they fear that their report “will not be investigated or acted upon unless this court oversees the same.”
“The petitioners have no faith in the investigative authority, especially the DCI, who has been compromised by the perpetrators of this grand corruption and has done nothing,” the attorney wrote.
“It is crucial in the public interest and to protect the petitioners from further intimidation that the court exercise its supervisory role and order that the petitioner’s report be investigated and that the findings be made public and delivered to this court,” the attorney says.
Mr. Njagi, the attorney for the activists, informed The Nation yesterday that the case will be heard before Justice Esther Maim on September 21. Yesterday, the activists also conducted a press conference in Nairobi, where they asked the media to help spread the word about the alleged theft.
In their dossier, the activists present charts depicting the flow of cash and assert that additional funds may have been misappropriated in previous initiatives involving CCCC and other Chinese companies. According to them, the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) popped the syndicate’s bubble.
The activists assert, “All was well within the organized crime syndicate until hawk-eyed KRA officers who refused the organized crime syndicate’s overtures to accept bribes proceeded to carry out their constitutional mandate.”
“As a money mule, the accountant and several other money mules (including the Briton’s tea boy, a computer repair man, among others, and their wives) were indicted by KRA for the loss of Sh1.3 billion in tax revenue,” they continue.
“In a startling revelation, this macabre economic heist that cost the Kenyan taxpayer over Sh7 billion was conceived, designed, and implemented by foreign nationals, some of whom had acquired Kenyan citizenship as recently as 2016. All criminals were private sector actors.
The scheme was structured similarly to the infamous ‘Goldenberg Scandal’ of the mid-1990s, in which private citizens were paid for the delivery of air, according to the dossier. “Although this paper covers only the loss of [money between September 2020 and September 2022], AGVG is convinced that the aforementioned ‘private sector actors’ of foreign nationality have cost Kenya over $3 billion in foreign currency flight over the past 15 years,” they write.
The dossier also mentions high-ranking officials from China Road and Bridge Company (CRBC), North China Power Engineering (Kenya) Company, and Cale Infrastructure Construction Company.
The activists cite the issuance of fictitious bills as the primary method “raw development funds from infrastructure projects across the country” were plundered.
They claim that “fictitious purchases and delivery notes were used to support payment for nonexistent goods and services to defraud the Kenyan taxpayer and the government of funds paid for via expensive loans.”
Petition Seeks Court Oversight for Alleged Sh4.4bn China Roads Scandal
