Kenya Insights

Author: Our Correspondent

  • President Ruto and Uhuru Reportedly Gets In A Heated Argument In A Closed-Door Meeting With Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed‬

    President Ruto and Uhuru Reportedly Gets In A Heated Argument In A Closed-Door Meeting With Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed‬

    Kenya’s most explosive political feud tore through the gilded corridors of the African Union in Addis Ababa last Sunday in a dramatic confrontation that has rattled regional diplomats and sent shockwaves through the continent’s fragile peace architecture.

    President William Ruto and his predecessor Uhuru Kenyatta locked horns in a tense, behind-closed-doors meeting hosted by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on the sidelines of the 39th AU Summit, with multiple aides and participants telling the media that the session degenerated into an electric exchange of accusations and counter-accusations that left the room stunned.

    The fiery encounter was no accident of scheduling.

    It was a carefully engineered intervention, sanctioned by Great Lakes presidents, specifically designed to force the two men into the same room and thaw their deep freeze of a relationship that, sources say, has directly sabotaged Kenya’s coveted role as mediator in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s catastrophic eastern conflict.

    And it failed spectacularly.

    The drama began, deceptively enough, with a photograph.

    A group image showing PM Abiy Ahmed sandwiched between the two Kenyan leaders went viral almost the moment it was posted online, dissected frame by frame by an eager Kenyan public hungry for any signal of reconciliation between the country’s fourth and fifth presidents.

    The image was shared by Uhuru’s camp after all parties had agreed to await Ahmed’s nod. But Ruto’s official handles never shared the photo at all. That single, glaring omission spoke louder than any statement either side would later issue.

    Inside the room, it was anything but cordial.

    “Aides recount a room electric with grievance,” a source close to the talks told the media. Ruto, who has long simmered over what his camp views as deliberate political sabotage by his predecessor, came to Addis prepared.

    He confronted Uhuru with what he described as evidence of subversion against his Kenya Kwanza administration, presenting a case that his government’s difficulties, from the Gen Z revolts of 2024 to the resurgence of the opposition Azimio coalition, bore the fingerprints of his predecessor’s scheming.

    Uhuru, characteristically composed but reportedly sharp in his rebuttal, denied it all.

    He told the gathering he had not been undermining the Kenya Kwanza administration. But he did not pull his punches either, firing back that the government had failed to accord him the dignity and protocol owed to a former head of state.

    Party leadership, he reportedly argued, cannot be equated to treason. Democratic participation cannot be dressed up as subversion.

    THE DRC CRISIS NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT

    Beneath the personal drama lay a far more alarming reality: Kenya’s internal feud had, in the blunt assessment of an AU secretariat investigation, been actively strangling peace efforts in the eastern DRC.

    Uhuru serves as a linchpin on the AU-EAC-SADC facilitation panel tasked with mediating in the restive provinces of Ituri, North Kivu, and South Kivu, regions where M23 rebels and their backers have unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe on millions of Congolese civilians.

    His role demands seamless communication with President Ruto’s government, passing on progress reports and flagging obstacles to AU headquarters.

    Instead, the two camps have given each other cold shoulders so frosty that the diplomatic pipeline has effectively seized up.

    AU presidents, alarmed at the glacial pace of progress in the DRC talks, commissioned an internal investigation.

    Its conclusion was damning: the personal animosity between Kenya’s fourth and fifth presidents was the single biggest structural impediment to regional peace.

    That finding is what dragged both men into a room with Abiy Ahmed, a leader who has cultivated personal rapport with both through years of shared Horn of Africa diplomacy and bilateral ties.

    His pitch, sources say, was blunt: reconcile or watch DRC’s chaos swallow Kenya’s carefully built mediator reputation along with it.

    The pitch did not land as planned.

    THE BETRAYAL THAT REFUSES TO DIE

    To understand why the room crackled with such barely suppressed rage, you have to understand a decade’s worth of broken promises.

    Ruto served as Uhuru’s deputy for a full ten years, from 2013 to 2022, under the TNA-URP alliance and later the Jubilee Party banner.

    Their partnership was sealed with what insiders describe as a solemn political covenant: Uhuru would serve two terms, then hand the baton to Ruto.

    The now-infamous pledge, delivered in Kikuyu by Uhuru, was: “Mimi nitafanya zangu kumi, kisha kumi za William.” I will do my ten years, then hand over to William to do his ten.

    Instead, Uhuru shook hands with Raila Odinga, threw the full weight of state machinery behind the opposition, and watched Ruto’s allies face raids, prosecutions, and frozen funding. Ruto won anyway in 2022, but the wounds have festered ever since.

    Uhuru, far from retreating into the quiet golf courses of retirement, has weaponised his post-presidency. He has openly endorsed Wiper boss Kalonzo Musyoka and former Interior CS Fred Matiangi, both seen as serious presidential contenders for 2027. His Jubilee Party has been revived and restructured. Kalonzo has been installed as Azimio coalition party leader. Ruto’s camp views all of it as a coordinated political insurgency designed to end his presidency after one term.

    The Addis meeting erupted just three weeks after Ruto hosted Uhuru’s younger brother Muhoho Kenyatta at State House in Nairobi, in what was seen as another backchannel reconciliation attempt. Muhoho, who publicly attended in his capacity as the International Council representative of the Duke of Edinburgh Award, is widely regarded as the family’s quiet power broker. The attempt, clearly, did not produce the desired effect.

    Ruto told Ahmed in the meeting that he had done everything within his power to accommodate his predecessor in retirement. He cited his now-famous December 2024 visit to Ichaweri, Uhuru’s rural home in Gatundu South, where he arrived bearing 12 goats, a deeply symbolic gesture among the Kikuyu people. The visit was hailed as the most potent signal yet that the two men had buried the hatchet. Within weeks, Uhuru was at a Jubilee Party meeting openly attacking Ruto’s government, accusing it of erasing the gains of his own decade in power.

    “Today, many of the past’s gains have been eroded,” Uhuru told the gathering that installed Matiangi as Jubilee’s new kingpin.

    Twelve goats, it turned out, were not enough.

    Neither side was willing to confirm the explosive details of what transpired in Addis, though neither could fully deny that the meeting happened.

    State House spokesman Munyori Buku was carefully evasive, telling reporters: “I am not aware there was a mediation meeting. I know President Ruto and former President Uhuru Kenyatta met together with PM Abiy. I have no details of what transpired because it was a closed meeting.”

    Uhuru’s spokesperson Kanze Dena was more colourful in her dismissal. “Aiii surely!! Wasisalimiane? Inakuwa analysis!! Acheni hizo,” she fired off, suggesting the entire controversy was a case of reading too much into two men saying hello.

    Politicians from Uhuru’s orbit were less diplomatic.

    Embakasi North MP James Gakuya, speaking to Kameme TV on Wednesday, said plainly that the retired president is not going anywhere near the government’s corner. “Uhuru has indicated that he is in the opposition, and this is a way of Ruto’s divide-and-rule tactic,” Gakuya said, adding that no amount of wooing would pull Uhuru out of the united opposition camp ahead of 2027.

    The stakes of this feud extend far beyond the bruised egos of two men who once ruled Kenya together.

    The DRC’s eastern provinces remain a theatre of catastrophe, with the M23 rebellion, backed by external actors, having seized territory and displaced millions. Kenya’s role as a neutral mediator, which Nairobi has carefully cultivated since the 1990s, is the product of decades of diplomatic investment.

    The EAC regional force that Kenya led into eastern DRC last year, and the Nairobi Process which Uhuru champions on the AU panel, are the twin pillars of that investment. Without coordination between the two Kenyan poles, that edifice is cracking.

    The CSIS, in a detailed September 2025 report on Kenya-DRC relations, noted that domestic political dynamics in Kenya, specifically the conflict between Ruto and Uhuru, had directly impacted the DRC peace process from the very beginning, with the two camps not talking to each other even as Kenyan troops served in the region.

    For Ruto, the personal calculus is no less urgent.

    He heads into 2027 battered by the Gen Z uprisings of 2024, a stubborn economic crisis, a rebellion from former deputy Rigathi Gachagua in the Mt Kenya heartland, and now a resurgent opposition coalition that his predecessor appears to be personally bankrolling.

    A unified opposition in 2027 could prove devastating for a sitting president who squeaked to victory in 2022 with 50.49 percent of the vote.

    For Uhuru, the calculus is simpler: stay relevant, wield influence, and deny Ruto the coronation he believes was stolen from their pact.

    PM Abiy Ahmed, who facilitated what was meant to be a quiet rapprochement, leaves Addis with a failed mediation on his hands and two Kenyan leaders whose cold war now risks becoming a continental liability.

    One senior diplomat, briefed on the encounter and speaking strictly on condition of anonymity, put it most bleakly: “Africa cannot afford to have its most experienced mediating nation paralysed by a personal feud. The DRC is bleeding. Kenya is squabbling.”

    As things stand, the squabble shows no sign of ending.

  • Questions Over The Secrecy Of Companies Buying South Sudan Oil

    Questions Over The Secrecy Of Companies Buying South Sudan Oil

    A London courtroom drama that briefly froze 600,000 barrels of South Sudan’s Dar Blend crude last November did far more than expose a broken financing deal.

    It ripped open a hidden world of opaque intermediaries, shell-layered trading structures and politically connected middlemen who, investigators now believe, have quietly captured the lifeblood of one of Africa’s most fragile and oil-dependent economies.

    When British commodity trader BB Energy obtained an emergency injunction from the High Court of England and Wales on November 18, 2025, the order specifically named Dubai-based EuroAmerican Energy and Singapore-registered Cathay Petroleum International Pte Ltd as the firms seeking to receive the disputed cargo.

    Neither had made any prepayment to Juba for the oil they intended to take, a barrister for BB Energy told Justice Christopher Butcher.

    Court documents showed the cargo was awarded by South Sudan to EuroAmerican, and that Meridian Energy Pte Ltd paid $30 million for it with the intention to resell to Cathay Petroleum International.

    A four-company chain had formed around a single shipment of crude oil belonging to one of the world’s poorest nations — and the government that owned that oil had no public explanation for why.

    Sudan’s Ministry of Energy and Oil, which processes and transports South Sudan’s crude through its territories before export at Port Sudan’s Bashayer terminal, has been explicit about the limits of what it knows.

    A ministry source told the Sudanese outlet Al-Mohagig that Khartoum issues shipping bills to both the government of South Sudan and to companies, but has no knowledge of who is actually purchasing the crude, because the sale “takes place directly between those companies and the government of South Sudan.” That admission, intended to deflect responsibility, instead crystallises precisely what investigators and creditors have been screaming about for months: nobody appears to know, or is willing to say, who is actually buying South Sudan’s oil.

    The answer, pieced together from court filings, leaked shipping records and investigative reports obtained by Africa Intelligence, is deeply troubling.

    A trading network built on bribery’s ruins

    The investigation traces how a high-risk oil trading continuum linking Arcadia Petroleum, Glencore and Cathay Petroleum converged with EuroAmerican Energy to quietly take control of South Sudan’s oil export system.

    The lineage of the players matters enormously. Arcadia Petroleum collapsed in 2018 amid allegations of massive fraud involving $349 million.

    Glencore, which had traded South Sudanese crude through the local firm Trinity Energy under an Afreximbank facility, later made a far more damning public admission: the UK Serious Fraud Office found that over $25 million in bribes were paid across multiple African states, including South Sudan, between 2011 and 2016 for preferential access to oil.

    Personnel from those networks did not disappear. According to investigators with access to internal shipping allocation records, several core traders from Arcadia migrated to Glencore, and from Glencore migrated again into Cathay Petroleum, a firm founded in March 2003 by a Chinese national operating between Hong Kong and Singapore, which had for years traded crude linked to Libya, Yemen and North Sudan before its abrupt expansion into South Sudan’s market in 2025.

    While Cathay provides the trading platform, the physical and commercial seizure of cargoes is executed by EuroAmerican Energy under the direction of Idris Taha, a Sudanese trader holding British nationality and frequently traveling on a German passport.

    Taha’s network allegedly captured more than 80 percent of South Sudan’s crude oil exports at the height of its dominance.

    That a single offshore trader, operating through layered intermediaries and with no disclosed prepayment obligation to Juba, could come to control the overwhelming majority of a sovereign nation’s primary revenue stream is a finding of staggering consequence.

    Oil service firms linked to former Vice President Benjamin Bol Mel, to Dutch national Cornelis Nicolaas Abraham Loos and to Idris Taha are alleged to have charged up to three times standard international rates for oilfield services, figures fully reimbursed under cost-oil rules, transferring the financial burden directly onto public revenue.

    Loos, described by sources as a close associate of Bol Mel, allegedly managed financial flows through Dubai and handled UAE real estate assets on behalf of senior officials.

    The cargo chain that nobody will explain

    The architecture of the trading structure revealed in court proceedings and shipping records is deliberately designed to obscure beneficial ownership and dilute accountability. Rather than flowing directly from a producing consortium to a refiner or end-user, South Sudanese crude now passes through first-level intermediaries before being resold to a second tier, which then delivers to a final buyer. At each layer, revenue is diluted, traceability is weakened and beneficial ownership becomes harder to identify. Large portions of proceeds now disappear outside the formal banking system altogether.

    The consequences for Juba’s treasury have been catastrophic. South Sudan’s Ministry of Finance has been cut off from export data and no longer receives official reports on output, prices or destinations of crude sales.

    The Central Bank, deprived of incoming foreign currency, reports severe shortages, triggering the collapse of the South Sudanese pound. The Ministry of Petroleum has not published an annual report since May 2021, leaving a complete blackout in public financial transparency.

    Into this institutional void stepped Benjamin Bol Mel and the network around him.

    As Vice President, and previously as a politically connected businessman with companies awarded contracts under the “Oil for Roads” programme, Bol Mel allegedly presided over the systematic redirection of oil revenues away from the Treasury.

    UN investigators found that the “Oil for Roads” infrastructure programme, budgeted at $2.2 billion since 2020, delivered less than five percent of promised works.

    The money instead flowed into political patronage networks. President Salva Kiir dismissed Bol Mel on November 12, 2025, stripping him of his general’s rank, demoting him to private and placing him under house arrest in Juba.

    Where did $25 billion go?

    The scale of what has been lost is almost incomprehensible for a country where, according to international aid agencies, 7.7 million people face hunger.

    The UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan concluded that the government’s oil inflows have exceeded $25.2 billion since independence in 2011, including revenues and oil-backed loans, yet systemic corruption and diversion of revenues mean hardly any money reaches essential services.

    Most civil servants are underpaid or unpaid.

    International donors now spend more on South Sudan’s basic services than the government itself, and the country ranks last out of 180 nations in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.

    The UN report, titled “Plundering a Nation,” was not an abstract finding. It named schemes, named figures, and named the precise mechanisms through which a nation’s wealth was extracted. Yet those mechanisms continued to function until an injunction in a London court briefly made them visible to the outside world.

    South Sudan currently owes commodity traders and financiers an estimated $2.3 billion, much of it tied to oil-backed loans that creditors are increasingly pursuing in foreign jurisdictions.

    Qatar National Bank secured a $1 billion award against South Sudan after years of unpaid loans, with the government failing to even defend itself in arbitration. Afreximbank obtained a judgment worth $657 million in a London court in 2024 after South Sudan defaulted on pandemic-era credit facilities.

    The question of who knew, and when

    The former administration’s defenders argue that the pipeline rupture of February 2024, which halted exports for months and sent the government scrambling for emergency financing, explains much of the chaos. BB Energy itself acknowledged the disruption as an “exceptional circumstance” that caused delays under the prepayment agreement it signed with Juba in February 2025. But investigators close to the new administration reject the explanation as convenient cover.

    The redirection of cargoes to EuroAmerican Energy and Cathay Petroleum was not a response to an emergency. It was, according to officials who have reviewed internal records now in the hands of probers, a structural feature of how the petroleum ministry operated under the previous leadership.

    Former petroleum undersecretary Deng Lual Wol, dismissed alongside Bol Mel, is identified in investigative reporting as the day-to-day architect of the ministry’s commercial relationships with these opaque trading networks.

    Former Nilepet chief executive Ayuel Ngor Kacgor, also removed in November, is said to still hold board positions at operating companies registered in Mauritius and to receive remuneration linked to legacy arrangements. Investigators say key contracts were destroyed or removed by former officials before the new leadership could access them. The current team operates, in the words of one official, “blind.”

    Khartoum’s position and the Heglig complication

    Sudan’s statement that it has no knowledge of who buys the crude it transports is, from a narrow technical standpoint, accurate. Juba sells the oil; Port Sudan ships it. But the admission also illustrates the near-total absence of any transit-country oversight over who ultimately receives the cargo and on what financial terms.

    The Heglig processing hub, which handles South Sudan’s Unity State crude and which was briefly threatened by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces at the end of 2024, remains a critical chokepoint.

    Its vulnerability adds yet another layer of operational leverage that external actors, including Chinese state firms CNPC and Sinopec, have been accused of exploiting to extract commercial concessions.

    China’s dominance in South Sudan’s oilfield services sector, from drilling to logistics, has given it outsized leverage over production decisions. Policymakers have warned that this influence has become a structural threat to South Sudan’s economic sovereignty, allowing external actors to dictate the pace at which national revenues are realised.

    A new administration, a test of resolve

    The appointment in November 2025 of Dr Bak Barnaba Chol as Finance Minister, Emmanuel Athiei Ayual as Nilepet managing director and Dr Chol Thon Abel as petroleum undersecretary has been accompanied by the launch of formal investigative proceedings into the Petronas acquisition failure and the EuroAmerican network.

    Idris Taha himself travelled to Juba in December, his first known personal visit to the capital in years, in a bid to rebuild political access. He found locked doors. The new leadership has signalled that it will not engage with him.

    Whether that resolve holds is the question that now shadows every cargo that loads at Bashayer terminal. Taha and the traders he works with have spent decades perfecting their craft in sanctioned and conflict-affected markets. They know how to wait out political transitions.

    They know how to identify new officials who might be susceptible to inducements. They know that even when caught, as Glencore was when it admitted to bribery, the consequences are often manageable and the networks can survive to operate under new names.

    BB Energy has now lifted its first cargo under the reconstituted prepayment arrangement, with CEO Mohamed Bassatne calling it “an important first step.” The legal case against Juba remains technically alive, suspended pending finalisation of a comprehensive agreement. The company has $61.5 million outstanding at minimum and continues to operate under a framework where the full terms of delivery are still being negotiated.

    For South Sudan, the arithmetic is bleak. Oil generates more than 90 percent of government revenue. The buyers of that oil have, for years, been operating behind a veil that even Sudan’s own pipeline ministry admits it cannot penetrate.

    The traders who moved into that vacuum came from networks that paid bribes, collapsed under fraud allegations and then reconstituted themselves under new names.

    The officials who gave them preferential access are now under house arrest or under investigation.

    What remains is a nation whose most vital resource continues to flow outward every few weeks in 600,000-barrel cargoes, to buyers whose ultimate identities and the precise financial arrangements that govern their purchases remain, deliberately and systematically, unknown.

    That, more than any single legal filing, is the scandal at the heart of South Sudan’s oil industry.

  • Over 1,000 Kenyans Lured, Deceived and Sent to Die in Russia’s War

    Over 1,000 Kenyans Lured, Deceived and Sent to Die in Russia’s War

    NAIROBI — They were told they would be security guards. One expected to work as a salesman. Another believed he was headed to Russia as a high-level athlete. Instead, all of them were handed weapons after three weeks of perfunctory military training and sent to the front lines of one of the bloodiest conflicts in modern European history.

    More than 1,000 Kenyans have now been trafficked into Russia’s war against Ukraine, according to a classified joint report by the National Intelligence Service and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations that was tabled before Kenya’s National Assembly on Wednesday. The figure — far exceeding previous government estimates — has ignited a parliamentary firestorm and triggered demands for the exposure and prosecution of state officials who investigators say are complicit in what amounts to an industrial-scale human trafficking operation with blood on its hands.

    The report, presented by National Assembly Majority Leader Kimani Ichung’wah, describes a criminal syndicate so deeply embedded in Kenya’s government apparatus that it has corrupted officers in immigration, the criminal investigations directorate, the anti-narcotics unit, the National Employment Authority and, most shockingly of all, staff inside both the Russian embassy in Nairobi and the Kenyan embassy in Moscow.

    “Government offices are not to be used for criminal activities,” Ichung’wah told a hushed House. “Our embassy must be the place where Kenyans can seek refuge, not exploitation.”

    The human toll documented in the report is stark. As of this month, 89 Kenyans remain on active front lines in eastern Ukraine. Thirty-nine are hospitalized. Twenty-eight are missing in action. Thirty-five remain confined to Russian military camps. At least 10 confirmed deaths have been recorded — a figure that separate tallies suggest could be as high as 18. Four Kenyans are currently held as prisoners of war in Ukrainian custody. One has completed his contract. One is detained.

    The families of those men and women have been left to agonize in silence, some clutching photographs of sons and brothers who vanished months ago after telling relatives they were off to find work abroad.

    A Recruitment Machine Hiding in Plain Sight

    The operation, investigators found, was not improvised. It was systematic, well-funded and brazen.

    Rogue recruitment agencies — at least one of them operating from a commercial address along Koinange Street in central Nairobi and hiding behind the branding of the government’s legitimate Kazi Majuu overseas employment initiative — have been actively head-hunting targets for the Russian military. Their preferred recruits: former Kenya Defence Forces personnel, ex-police officers and unemployed civilians between their mid-twenties and early fifties, men and women desperate enough to believe an offer that seemed, in hindsight, almost too good to be true.

    The promised terms were extraordinary. Monthly salaries of approximately 350,000 Kenyan shillings. Signing bonuses ranging from 900,000 shillings to 1.2 million. And the ultimate carrot: eventual Russian citizenship for those who survived long enough to collect it.

    What the recruits were not told was that the contracts they signed in Kenya — and countersigned with a shadowy overseas employment agency in Moscow — were written in Cyrillic, a script none of them could read. By the time they understood what they had agreed to, they were already in military camps.

    “They are basically just giving you a gun to go and die,” Ichung’wah told Parliament, his voice tight with barely contained fury.

    Victims paid as much as 1.6 million shillings in recruitment fees for the privilege of being trafficked. Bank accounts linked to key suspects have since been frozen. Passports, contracts and electronic communications have been recovered as evidence. Multiple arrests are expected.

    A State Within the State

    What has most alarmed lawmakers is not the existence of rogue private recruiters — those, at least, can be deregistered and prosecuted. What has alarmed them is the evidence that the network could not have operated without active protection from inside the Kenyan government itself.

    According to the NIS-DCI report, colluding officials from the Directorate of Immigration Services, the DCI and the National Employment Authority facilitated the movement of recruits through Jomo Kenyatta International Airport without interception. Embassy staff in Moscow helped issue the visit visas that made the travel possible. When airport scrutiny intensified after earlier exposures, traffickers simply rerouted their human cargo through Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa, exploiting the region’s more porous border systems.

    In September 2025, a DCI raid on Great Wall Apartments uncovered 22 victims aged between 24 and 38, being held under the supervision of two Kenyans operating on behalf of a Russian national. The Russian was arrested the following day — and deported back to Russia within 24 hours, raising immediate questions about whose interests were being protected and why justice moved so swiftly in his favor.

    Ichung’wah demanded answers. “The Ministry of Interior, through the State Department for Immigration Services, must pinpoint the officers colluding with criminals. The same applies to the DCI and the National Employment Authority. Our ambassador in Moscow must identify the officers within the embassy that may have colluded with these criminals.”

    Taita Taveta Woman Representative Lydia Haika, whose parliamentary committee has been flooded with complaints about overseas exploitation, noted that the National Employment Authority had blacklisted some agencies — but that many others continued to operate. “These are issues that come to our committee every day,” she said.

    A Continent Being Harvested

    Kenya’s crisis is not happening in isolation. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in November that Kyiv had identified at least 1,436 foreign nationals from 36 African countries fighting on Russia’s side, warning that the true number was almost certainly higher. A February 2026 report by INPACT, a Swiss-based investigative organization, identified 1,417 African men who since 2023 have signed formal contracts to enlist with Russian forces. Recruitment, the report found, has been accelerating steadily — rising from 177 cases in 2023 to 592 in 2024 and 647 in 2025.

    Cameroon leads African nations in confirmed deaths, with between 94 and 96 of its nationals killed in combat. Kenya’s confirmed death toll, while officially lower, is almost certainly undercounted. Identifying and repatriating the dead has proven agonizingly difficult. Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi, who announced plans in February to visit Moscow to demand formal bilateral protections for Kenyan citizens, told the BBC that some bodies had been found in Ukrainian territory, requiring coordination with Kyiv even to begin the process of bringing the dead home.

    Russia, for its part, has built an elaborate architecture of deception to sustain its African recruitment pipeline. A website called “Fight for Russia,” hosted on Russian servers and launched in January 2025, has carried online application forms for foreign volunteers. Social media campaigns run by influencers, many of them African fighters-turned-ambassadors for Russian military service, have been deployed to reach young men on the continent through platforms they already use daily. In some cases, the FSB, Russia’s federal security service, has been directly implicated in coordinating the networks.

    For those who refuse the pitch or try to turn back after arriving, the choices are brutal. Illegal immigrants intercepted in Russia, the INPACT report found, are given two options: deportation, or a contract with the Russian army.

    The Economy Behind the Desperation

    Every parliamentarian who rose to speak on Wednesday returned, eventually, to the same uncomfortable truth: the traffickers are exploiting a real and desperate hunger for economic survival.

    Funyula MP Wilberforce Oundo noted that Kenyans pursue manual and low-skilled jobs abroad not from recklessness but from extreme economic hardship. Baringo North MP Joseph Makilap called on the DCI and NIS to interrogate agencies suspected of sending Kenyans to conflict zones, and urged the government to create local reintegration pathways — farm work, vocational training — for those who have already returned, many of them traumatized, some amputated, some barely functioning.

    “The only way we can save ourselves,” said Oundo, “is to continuously build this economy so each Kenyan can have a job. Otherwise, many young people end up maimed or dead in conflict zones.”

    Ichung’wah echoed the warning, urging job seekers to verify overseas employment offers exclusively through licensed and regulated agencies. He reminded Kenyans that the Kazi Majuu program — the legitimate government initiative whose name and branding the traffickers have been stealing — exists precisely to provide verified overseas opportunities through channels that do not end in military camps in Kursk Oblast.

    What Happens Next

    Investigations are ongoing. Kenyan authorities say more arrests are imminent. Foreign Minister Mudavadi’s planned visit to Moscow, if it takes place, will seek a formal bilateral agreement barring the conscription of Kenyan nationals. Kenya has already deregistered more than 600 non-compliant recruitment agencies since the scandal broke.

    But the parliamentary session on Wednesday made clear that accountability within the state itself remains the harder problem. Names have not yet been named. The rogue immigration officials, the complicit DCI officers, the embassy staff in Moscow — none have been publicly identified or charged.

    Until they are, as Ichung’wah made plain, the pipeline remains open.

    “They have made other Kenyans lose lives,” he said. “Others suffer in the battlefield. And the emotional turmoil that the families are going through.”

    Outside Parliament, in houses across Nairobi and Kisumu and Eldoret and the Western counties, those families are still waiting for their sons to call.

    Reporting contributed by correspondents in Nairobi. Additional information drawn from NIS-DCI intelligence findings presented to the National Assembly, statements by Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and reports by INPACT, France 24, The Washington Post, and Al Jazeera.

  • THE FIRM IN THE DOCK: How Kaplan and Stratton Became the Most Scrutinised Law Firm in Kenya

    THE FIRM IN THE DOCK: How Kaplan and Stratton Became the Most Scrutinised Law Firm in Kenya

    In the annals of Kenyan legal history, few institutions have carried the weight of Kaplan and Stratton Advocates with as much quiet authority as that firm has for decades.

    Founded in the colonial era and now commanding a client portfolio that spans blue-chip corporations, international development banks, insurance conglomerates and the country’s wealthiest families, it has long projected an image of impeccable legal craftsmanship.

    That image is now in serious jeopardy.

    Within the space of a single week in February 2026, two senior partners of the same firm have found themselves at the centre of separate but thematically identical storms: allegations of document fraud, manufactured evidence and the manipulation of Kenya’s highest judicial processes for private gain.

    The convergence of these two matters has sent tremors through the Nairobi bar and raised questions that will not be easily answered about the culture, oversight and accountability within one of the country’s most prestigious commercial law practices.

    THE DEAD MAN’S SIGNATURE

    The first and more advanced of the two matters concerns the estate of James Boro Karugu, Kenya’s second Attorney General, who died on November 9, 2022, aged 86. Karugu was, by every account, a man of towering legal intellect and fierce personal integrity.

    He had resigned as Attorney General under President Daniel arap Moi on June 2, 1981, just fifteen months into the role, rather than bend his principles to the pressures of the administration.

    He retreated to Kiamara, his coffee farm in Kiambu, named his holding company Mathara Holdings after the syllables of his late wife Margaret Githara’s name, and spent four decades quietly building one of the most substantial private estates in the country’s history.

    That estate, when it came to be contested in the courts, encompassed over 753 acres of land spread across Nairobi, Nakuru, Murang’a, Kwale and Kiambu Counties, Treasury bonds valued at Sh404.7 million, shares in Kenya Power, Nation Media Group and Maramba Holdings, as well as a commercial building along Kenyatta Avenue in Nairobi’s central business district. Control of Mathara Holdings and its ten subsidiaries forms the beating heart of the dispute.

    Weeks after Karugu was buried at his Kiamara farm, a will dated April 2, 2014 was presented to family members at a hotel in Kiambu.

    Alongside it came a trust deed establishing the JBK Foundation, a vehicle that, if recognised by the courts, would place the entirety of Karugu’s assets not directly distributed by the will into a trust administered by named executors. The documents were unknown to the family during the former AG’s lifetime and emerged only after his burial.

    Victoria Nyambura Karugu, the former Attorney General’s firstborn daughter, who had managed the family’s business affairs as Chief Executive of Mathara Holdings after her father’s dementia took hold in 2015, was having none of it.

    She told investigators the documents were fabrications.

    She pointed to a 2010 will drawn up by Patel and Patel Advocates as representing her father’s authentic last wishes. And she lodged a formal complaint with the Directorate of Criminal Investigations.

    What followed that complaint was, by the account of investigators, one of the more disturbing forensic discoveries in recent Kenyan legal history.

    Chief Inspector Duncan Maina, acting on behalf of the DPP and the DCI, filed an affidavit in the High Court detailing how forensic examiners discovered that the questioned documents bore grammatical errors, arithmetic mistakes, spelling blunders and erratic page numbering suggesting the documents had been assembled from multiple sources.

    The execution page allegedly bore deliberate obscurity concealing its page number, raising red flags about tampering.

    “The impugned Will and Trust Deed as presented bear several drafting concerns that do not resonate with professional standards of a man of the stature of the deceased, an impeccable lawyer and second Attorney General of the Republic of Kenya,” investigators stated in their affidavit. The initials appearing on all pages of the two questioned documents, attributed to Karugu, were declared a forgery.

    Witnesses gave conflicting accounts of the will’s execution, with some admitting they signed on different days. Crucially, none could confirm witnessing the settlor or other trustees sign the document, a fundamental requirement for valid execution.

    One of the petitioners initially resisted producing the original documents for forensic examination before eventually surrendering copies. The examiner found that the questioned initials and signatures were not those of James Boro Karugu.

    On December 23, 2025, the Director of Public Prosecutions approved charges for forgery, uttering false documents and conspiracy to defraud. Six individuals were to face prosecution.

    Among those named were Karugu’s son Eric Mwaura Karugu, Jane Wangechi Kabiu, William Kimani Richu, Eliud Mwaura Gatambia, Joshua Mwaura Kimani and lawyer Peter Mbuthia Gachuhi, a senior partner at Kaplan and Stratton.

    THE LAWYER WHO BARELY KNEW THE MAN

    The inclusion of Peter Mbuthia Gachuhi in the list of suspects is not simply sensational. It is, to those who have followed this succession battle, the logical culmination of a pattern that Nyambura Karugu had been pointing to for some time.

    Gachuhi, together with Joshua Mwaura Kimani and Eliud Mwaura Gatambia, had filed a petition for a grant of probate on July 5, 2023, through Kaplan and Stratton Advocates, seeking permission for the three to execute the contested will.

    Nyambura alleged that Gachuhi had met her father only once in the eight years preceding his death, was not present at his funeral or memorial service, and was not a close friend or confidant of the former Attorney General.

    She further alleged a conflict of interest with damning precision.

    Gachuhi and Kaplan and Stratton had previously represented Karugu in 2016 when Lucy Githire Muthoni claimed to have been married to the former Attorney General.

    The firm was also instructed in a similar claim by another woman, Wambui Mwangi. In that matter, they were instructed to deny all claims but also to seek a settlement confirming that Muthoni and Karugu had never been married.

    For Nyambura, a lawyer who had represented the man in such intimate personal matters and was now presenting himself as the executor of the man’s estate under a will of highly questionable authenticity presented a conflict that went well beyond the merely procedural.

    In a separate affidavit filed in the constitutional petition proceedings, Nyambura alleged that the motive of Senior Counsel Fred Ojiambo and Kaplan and Stratton was to be found in what she described as a very profitable retainer by the purported executors of the forged will and trust deed.

    Lawyer Fred Ojiambo.
    Lawyer Fred Ojiambo.

    She argued that the assets of the deceased would be placed under the direct control of Kaplan and Stratton until their full depletion, to the grave prejudice of the legitimate beneficiaries.

    THE ATTEMPT TO SILENCE THE STATE

    When it became clear that prosecution was imminent, the six suspects moved.

    On January 19, 2026, they secured ex parte conservatory orders from the High Court, restraining the DPP and the DCI from summoning, arresting or charging them in relation to the will.

    The orders were obtained, according to lawyers representing Nyambura, shortly before the suspects were due to be arraigned. Murgor and Murgor Advocates wrote to the DPP characterising the timing as deliberate and designed to pre-empt imminent prosecution.

    The letter also accused Fred Ojiambo of previously obstructing investigations by declining to produce the original will for forensic examination.

    In correspondence dated May 12, 2025, Ojiambo had reportedly claimed that the document was being held by his firm under the authority of the succession court, a claim the complainant’s lawyers characterised as false.

    They argued that no court order existed authorising the firm to withhold the document and that the conduct amounted to interference with lawful investigations.

    When the matter came before Justice Bahati Mwamuye, it was Ojiambo himself who appeared in court on behalf of Gachuhi and the other petitioners.

    He told the court he had not been served with the relevant documents. The judge directed that the matter be mentioned on March 16 for further directions.

    The Attorney General, Dorcas Oduor, has now formally entered the arena on the side of the prosecution.

    In grounds of opposition dated February 17, 2026, she urged the Constitutional and Human Rights Division of the High Court to dismiss the petition by Gachuhi and his co-petitioners, arguing that criminal investigations cannot be stopped merely because succession proceedings are ongoing.

    The State was blunt in its characterisation of the petition.

    It described the application seeking conservatory orders as incompetent, misconceived and an abuse of the court process.

    It argued that the existence of High Court Succession Cause No. E916 of 2023 does not bar investigators from probing whether criminal offences were committed. It reminded the court that the Family Division has no jurisdiction to determine criminal culpability, including offences such as forgery.

    The AG stated that forgery is a criminal offence under the Penal Code and cannot be resolved in a family or succession court, adding that the existence of a succession case does not stop criminal investigations.

    THE SECOND STORM: TUJU AND THE BILLION-SHILLING PROPERTY

    Before the ink had dried on the Attorney General’s opposition papers in the Karugu matter, the firm found itself facing a second and separately explosive allegation.

    On February 16, 2026, former Cabinet Secretary and Jubilee Party Secretary General Raphael Tuju walked into DCI headquarters and formally recorded a criminal complaint against Senior Counsel Fred Ojiambo, the most senior lawyer at Kaplan and Stratton and the very same advocate who had appeared in court the previous day to defend Gachuhi.

    Raphael Tuju.
    Raphael Tuju.

    At the centre of Tuju’s complaint is a prime property in Karen valued at Ksh 1.5 billion.

    The dispute traces its origins to a commercial loan extended by the East African Development Bank to Tuju’s company, Dari Ltd, and enforcement proceedings the bank subsequently initiated against the property.

    What began as a loan dispute has, in Tuju’s account, metastasised into something far more sinister.

    Tuju told journalists outside DCI headquarters that he had written to the DCI ten days prior to personally presenting himself and had arrived bearing what he described as documentary evidence of criminal conduct by Ojiambo.

    At the core of his allegations was a claim that Ojiambo and other advocates at the firm had procured and manufactured falsehoods from a former Kenya Country Manager of the East African Development Bank and deposited those fabricated falsehoods in sworn affidavits filed before both the High Court and the Supreme Court of Kenya.

    He alleged the affidavits were presented as having been properly commissioned before a Commissioner for Oaths when they were no such thing.

    If that allegation is established, it would mean that sworn documents presented to Kenya’s apex court were fraudulent.

    Tuju also alleged that Ojiambo had persuaded the High Court to recognise a diplomatic immunity claim on behalf of the East African Development Bank, an immunity that Tuju flatly asserts does not exist in law, thereby freezing a separate criminal matter before the Magistrates Court for over a year.

    Most dramatically, he told investigators of what he described as a fake international warrant of arrest emanating from a Ugandan magistrate’s court and deployed against him as an instrument of intimidation.

    Ojiambo, reached for comment, dismissed the allegations with equanimity. “We haven’t falsified any affidavit on any matter whatsoever,” he said. He maintained he was unaware of the specifics of Tuju’s complaint at the time but denied categorically that he or his firm had engaged in any of the alleged conduct.

    Tuju was not prepared to extend the same courtesy.

    Standing outside DCI headquarters with his lawyer Duncan Okach at his side, he delivered what has since become one of the most quoted lines in recent Kenyan legal discourse. “Fred Ojiambo is a Bible-carrying fraud with a fake British accent,” he declared.

    He then deliberately drew a line between the two crises afflicting the same firm.

    He noted that Gachuhi, his colleague at Kaplan and Stratton, was already facing prosecution over the alleged forgery of former Attorney General Karugu’s will and asked, pointedly, what this said about the institution they both called home.

    “If this can happen to persons like the late former AG James Boro Karugu and me, who have had the privilege of serving this country in high office, what is the situation for other Kenyans who cannot afford to engage teams of lawyers?” Tuju said.

    A FIRM UNDER THE LENS

    Kaplan and Stratton has not issued any formal institutional statement in response to either matter. The firm’s website continues to list both Ojiambo and Gachuhi among its senior practitioners without amendment.

    Ojiambo is described as Senior Partner and Gachuhi as Partner, with his practice areas spanning civil litigation, banking, competition law and arbitration. He was admitted to the bar in 1990 and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.

    The convergence of these allegations against practitioners of the same firm within a single week has raised uncomfortable questions for Kenya’s legal establishment that go beyond the guilt or innocence of any individual.

    They touch on the adequacy of internal governance structures within large commercial law firms, the conflicts of interest that can arise when a firm simultaneously advises an individual client and later seeks to profit from that client’s estate, and the capacity of Kenya’s criminal justice system to hold members of the bar to the same standard it holds everyone else.

    The Law Society of Kenya has not publicly commented on either matter.

    WHAT COMES NEXT

    The constitutional petition filed by Gachuhi and his co-petitioners is scheduled for further directions before Justice Bahati Mwamuye on March 16, 2026. The succession cause concerning Karugu’s estate is also due for mention in March.

    The DCI complaint by Tuju against Ojiambo is at the investigative stage, and no charges have been preferred. Both Ojiambo and Gachuhi are entitled to the presumption of innocence and have denied wrongdoing.

    But the trajectory of both matters is clear enough. The State has made its position known. The Attorney General has described the attempt to halt the Karugu prosecution as an abuse of process.

    The DCI has before it a formal complaint implicating a Senior Counsel in manufactured affidavits placed before the Supreme Court.

    And two daughters of a man once described as Kenya’s most principled Attorney General are watching a legal institution attempt to inherit their father’s empire.

    For James Boro Karugu, the barefoot boy who once sat in the gallery of the High Court mesmerised by men in white wigs, the irony is one that history will not easily forgive.

    Allegations reported in this article are contested and subject to ongoing judicial proceedings. All parties are presumed innocent unless and until found guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction.

  • KPC Senior Management on the Spot Over Sh292 Million Pipeline Inspection Tender

    KPC Senior Management on the Spot Over Sh292 Million Pipeline Inspection Tender

    Senior managers at Kenya Pipeline Company are under mounting pressure after a procurement tribunal ruled that the State corporation unlawfully cancelled a Sh292.9 million tender for the inspection of its critical Mombasa–Nairobi fuel pipeline, exposing what the watchdog described as procedural flaws and weak justification at the highest levels.

    In a decision that has sent shockwaves through the energy sector, the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board ordered KPC to reinstate the $2.27 million contract for in-line inspection services on Line 5, a 450-kilometre, 20-inch multi-product pipeline that ferries billions of litres of fuel inland each year.

    The Board found that KPC’s termination of the tender was unlawful and procedurally flawed, dismissing claims by the company that there were material governance issues in the bidding documents.

    The ruling places senior management, including Managing Director Joe Sang, in the spotlight over what critics say is a pattern of opaque procurement decisions at one of the country’s most strategic State corporations.

    At the heart of the dispute is a September 2025 tender for high-resolution intelligent Magnetic Flux Leakage and geometry inspection of the ageing pipeline, a sophisticated integrity assessment designed to detect corrosion, metal loss and structural defects before they escalate into catastrophic leaks.

    Eleven firms submitted bids. Strategic Corporate Consultants Limited emerged as the lowest evaluated bidder at $2.27 million, inclusive of taxes. According to documents presented before the tribunal, an initial professional opinion endorsed the award in November.

    But in December, the Managing Director rejected the recommendation, citing alleged inconsistencies between subcontracting clauses in the Instructions to Tenderers and mandatory requirements in the bid document.

    A subsequent addendum recommended re-tendering, and a second professional opinion in January proposed outright termination. Bidders were then informed that the procurement had been cancelled due to ambiguities that allegedly made a lawful award impossible.

    Strategic Corporate Consultants challenged the decision, arguing that KPC had issued clarifications before bid closure and could not retroactively invalidate the process after declaring it the lowest evaluated bidder.

    In its ruling, the Board rejected KPC’s argument that Clause 4.4 and Mandatory Requirement No. 13 were contradictory. It held that a wholesome reading of the provisions showed they were complementary. Clause 4.4 permitted non-bidding firms to subcontract across multiple bids, while the mandatory requirement restricted multiple engagements only where the main contractor was foreign.

    By cancelling the tender on grounds the Board deemed unsubstantiated, KPC was found to have failed to comply with statutory procurement procedures designed to ensure fairness, transparency and accountability in public spending.

    The case unfolds against the backdrop of rising operational stakes for the company. KPC’s throughput volumes rose six per cent in 2024 to over nine million cubic metres, reflecting growing demand for fuel transport along the Northern Corridor.

    The integrity of the Mombasa–Nairobi pipeline is therefore not merely technical but central to national energy security and regional trade.

    Energy analysts warn that delays in conducting in-line inspection increase operational risk.

    Intelligent pigging surveys using Magnetic Flux Leakage tools are globally recognised as a primary safeguard against corrosion-related failures in high-pressure pipelines.

    Kenya has in the past suffered costly spills and product losses linked to infrastructure weaknesses, including major leaks in Thange and other sections that triggered environmental damage and compensation claims.

    The tribunal’s intervention now raises uncomfortable questions about internal controls at KPC. Was the cancellation a genuine governance concern or a misreading of tender provisions? Why was an endorsed award reversed after evaluation had been completed? And what due diligence did senior management undertake before terminating a multi-million shilling procurement process?

    Procurement law specialists note that termination of a tender at such an advanced stage is a serious administrative action that must be backed by clear legal grounds. Where such grounds are absent, it exposes public entities to litigation, reputational damage and delays in critical infrastructure maintenance.

    For a State corporation that has in recent years embarked on refinery upgrades, storage expansion and capacity enhancement, the optics are troubling. KPC operates in a capital-intensive sector where investor confidence and lender scrutiny hinge on governance discipline.

    The Board’s ruling effectively resets the process and compels the company to proceed in accordance with the law. But the political and managerial consequences may linger far longer.

    As Parliament intensifies oversight of State corporations and the Treasury pushes for tighter procurement compliance, the Sh292 million inspection tender could become a test case of whether accountability mechanisms in Kenya’s public sector are finally biting at the top.

    For now, the question hanging over KPC’s senior management is stark. In a company entrusted with the arteries of the nation’s fuel supply, how did a routine integrity inspection contract spiral into a procurement debacle now etched into the public record.

  • ‪High Court Grants Waititu A Sh20 Million Cash Bail‬

    ‪High Court Grants Waititu A Sh20 Million Cash Bail‬

    Former Kiambu Governor Ferdinand Waititu has received a partial reprieve after the High Court varied his bail conditions, reducing the amount to Sh20 million pending the determination of his appeal.

    The ruling, delivered on Wednesday by Justice Winfrida Okwany, allows Waititu to be released on Sh20 million cash or on two sureties with property each valued at not less than Sh30 million.

    The proposed properties will be verified and approved by the court’s Deputy Registrar.

    Waititu’s lawyers told the court that their client had faced difficulties in securing the bank guarantee previously ordered as part of his bail.

    They argued that more than seven months have passed since the original ruling, and the former county boss has consistently attended court hearings, showing he is not a flight risk.

    “The key consideration should be whether Mr Waititu has complied with court appearances and whether the bail conditions remain reasonable under the circumstances,” the defence submitted.

    The State opposed the application. Counsel Mwamburi, representing the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), argued that Waititu had not met the legal requirements for a review of the original bail terms.

    Mwamburi noted that submissions in the case are set for later this month and that the defence had not presented any new or compelling reasons to justify altering the existing conditions.

    The prosecution also questioned the fluctuating nature of the bail request, pointing out that the proposed amount was initially included, later withdrawn, and then reintroduced in the review application. “This change does not meet the threshold for review,” Mwamburi said.

    As part of the revised bail terms, Waititu has been ordered to deposit his passport with the court until the appeal process is concluded.

  • Revealed: The Cash Packages Russian Recruiters Use To Lure Kenyans Into Joining Ukrainian War

    Revealed: The Cash Packages Russian Recruiters Use To Lure Kenyans Into Joining Ukrainian War

    The offer sounds almost too good to refuse. Sign a military contract with Russia, and within three weeks you will have Sh4.4 million in your bank account, an amount that would take years to accumulate on a Kenyan salary. Stay alive for a month, and you pocket another Sh540,000. Die, and your family collects Sh24 million.

    This is the financial architecture of Russia’s recruitment machine, exposed in chilling detail in a confidential brief by Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi dated February 9, 2026, a document that has sent alarm bells ringing through government corridors and the homes of grieving Kenyan families alike.

    The figures are breathtaking by any local standard. An initial signing bonus of approximately 2.6 million rubles, equivalent to Sh4.4 million, is wired to recruits within three weeks of putting pen to paper. Monthly pay stands at around 320,000 rubles, or Sh540,014. For injury, the contract promises 3 million rubles, about Sh5 million. For death, 14 million rubles, or Sh24 million, is pledged to next of kin.

    But as the coffins multiply and families are told their sons lie in unmarked mass graves on the Ukrainian front line, those promised millions are looking more and more like a cruel fiction.

    ‘Sign Here, Then Die’: The Recruitment Pipeline

    As of January 23, 2026, the Kenyan embassy in Moscow had identified 95 Kenyans directly involved in the Russian military operation. Of these, 27 had been repatriated, eight were reported missing or confirmed dead, 33 were newly signed conscripts, and 27 remained of unknown status. The government’s own conservative estimate, however, puts the total number of Kenyans potentially recruited at over 200, with the real figure feared to be higher.

    Clinton Mogesa, 29, died while fighting for Russia
    Clinton Mogesa, 29, died while fighting for Russia

    The recruitment does not happen in back alleys. According to the Mudavadi brief, it is sophisticated, deliberate, and in many cases, alarmingly close to home. Recruitment networks operate both inside Kenya and within Russia itself. When recruits land in Russia, local contacts are waiting for them at airports. These handlers organise accommodation, transfer them to designated holding facilities, and shepherd them through contract signing in Russian, a language most of them cannot read.

    Bank accounts are opened for them in Russian rubles to receive payments. The men are, in effect, processed like cargo before being loaded onto the front line.

    An AFP investigation published in early February 2026 told the story of four Kenyan men with no military background whatsoever who were handed weapons and sent into battle. One had expected to work as a salesman. Two thought they were being employed as security guards. A fourth had been told he was travelling to Russia as a high-level athlete.

    Junior Foreign Affairs minister Korir Sing’oei described these men plainly: “These individuals are used as cannon fodder on the war front.”

    Former Soldiers, Desperate Men and a Dangerous Grey Zone

    The picture, however, is not entirely one of innocent victims. The Mudavadi brief makes a pointed observation that complicates the narrative: some of the newest recruits appear to be former members of Kenyan security forces, including the Kenya Defence Forces, the National Youth Service, and the Prisons Service, who signed contracts with full knowledge of what they were getting into.

    Investigative material reviewed by Kenyan media outlet the Daily Nation found video recordings of applicants openly marketing their military and police training as qualifications for combat service in Russia. Some were former police officers, others ex-soldiers. The identities of those coordinating local recruitment remain murky, but their methods are documented: WhatsApp groups, social media pages, and a website called ‘Fight for Russia’, launched in January 2025, which offered an online application form for any foreigner willing to join the war on Russia’s side.

    More disturbingly, the brief reveals a pattern of what might be called “bonus fraud”: some recruits reportedly plan from the outset to pocket the initial signing payment and then desert, seeking the Kenyan embassy’s help to flee Russia.

    “This trend presents reputational and diplomatic risks, as the Mission could be perceived as facilitating actions that may be interpreted by the host authorities as fraudulent or in bad faith,” Mudavadi’s brief warns bluntly.

    Mass Graves and Missing Sons: The Human Cost

    The dead are not coming home. Returnees have told the Kenyan embassy that those killed in action are buried in mass graves with, as the brief puts it, “minimal chance of retrace.” Families who have been waiting months for news of their sons and husbands may never get a definitive answer.

    Eight Kenyans have been reported missing or confirmed dead. The fate of another 27 is entirely unknown. At least four Kenyans are being held as prisoners of war in Ukrainian custody, their cases being pursued through Kenya’s mission in Vienna, which is accredited to Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities have separately confirmed the deaths of three Kenyans near the frontline in eastern Ukraine.

    Kenyan soldiers have been located across the vast Russian military theatre: in Belgorod near the Ukrainian border, at the Wagner Group’s military base in Istra, 80 kilometres from Moscow, in Saint Petersburg, 700 kilometres to the north, and in Rostov-on-Don, a city a full 1,000 kilometres from the capital.

    Clinton Nyapara Mogesa, 29, is among those confirmed dead. His face has become one of the public images of this crisis, a young Kenyan whose final chapter was written in a trench in eastern Europe.

    Nairobi Scrambles as Moscow Stays Silent

    The Kenyan government has formally asked Russia to place Kenya on what it calls a “military recruitment stop list,” a request that has so far yielded no public response from Moscow. Mudavadi has confirmed plans to travel to Russia for high-level talks, which are expected to address the status of hospitalised Kenyans, the release of those held as prisoners of war, and the framework for a potential Bilateral Labour Agreement designed to create legal, safe employment pathways to Russia.

    “The high-level engagements will include negotiations for the unconditional release of all Kenyans recruited into the Russian army,” Mudavadi said. “This should pave the way for the establishment of a Bilateral Labour Agreement with Russia, which will ensure access to legal, genuine, dignified and safe job opportunities in Russia.”

    In the meantime, the government has shut down over 600 non-compliant recruitment agencies and repatriated more than 30 Kenyans from Russia in the past two months alone. In September 2025, police raided an apartment in Athi River and rescued 21 young men hours before they were to board a flight to Russia. A recruitment agency employee was subsequently charged with human trafficking.

    President William Ruto has held phone calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seeking the release of Kenyans held in Ukrainian detention, while Zelenskyy has publicly stated that foreign nationals fighting for Russia are signing, in his foreign minister’s words, the equivalent of a death sentence.

    Ukraine’s own intelligence estimates put the total number of African fighters in Russian ranks at over 1,436, drawn from 36 countries. Kenya is not the worst-affected nation on that grim list, but it is among the most vocal in pushing back.

    A Warning That May Come Too Late for Some

    Even as the government scrambles, 33 new Kenyan recruits have been signed up since the crisis first came to light, drawn by the same promise of millions of shillings that has already cost others their lives.

    “The prospect of financial incentives has contributed to growing participation,” Mudavadi acknowledges in his brief, before adding a caveat that is both obvious and devastating: “The Ministry is yet to establish whether any Kenyan national has received their full entitlements as stipulated in their contracts.”

    In other words, the millions being promised may not, in many cases, ever arrive. What has arrived, with grim regularity, is the news that another young Kenyan is missing, injured, captured, or dead somewhere in the mud of eastern Ukraine.

    The cash packages that Russia’s recruiters are dangling before young Kenyans are real. Whether the men who sign up to collect them will live to spend a single shilling is an entirely different question.

  • How A Female Employee and Her Accomplice Cracked eCitizen and Siphoned Sh10 Million From Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital

    How A Female Employee and Her Accomplice Cracked eCitizen and Siphoned Sh10 Million From Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital

    She walked the corridors of Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) in Eldoret like any other dedicated staff member. She processed patient bills, navigated the government’s eCitizen system with ease, and, if anything, appeared to be a model of efficiency.

    Nobody suspected that Jane Wangari Wachira had turned this efficiency into an art form of criminal ingenuity that would, over the span of more than thirteen months, drain Sh10 million from one of Kenya’s most critical public health institutions.

    Today, she sits in police custody at Naiberi Police Station, alongside her external accomplice, Khamisi Hussein Akida, as investigators piece together what detectives are already calling one of the most brazen inside jobs in the history of Kenya’s public healthcare system.

    The court has granted police ten days to hold the pair, with the next hearing set for February 26.

    When they eventually face a judge, the charges are expected to include conspiracy to defraud and violations of the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act.

    The Anatomy of the Scheme

    The scheme was elegant in its simplicity and devastating in its scale. According to the Eldoret lead investigating officer, Edwin Chirchir, Wachira and Akida targeted unsuspecting patients arriving at MTRH to pay their hospital bills between January 1, 2025, and February 9, 2026. Rather than directing patients to pay into the hospital’s official government paybill, 222222, the duo diverted them.

    Patients were instructed to pay via cash or through Akida’s personal M-Pesa account numbers. Some were told this was a convenience. Others simply trusted that a hospital employee knew what she was doing.

    Once a patient handed over their money, Wachira moved to the next, equally crucial step.

    Using her insider access to the eCitizen platform, she logged into the system and cleared the patient’s bill as though full payment had been received and deposited. Official receipts were generated.

    Patients were given the clearance paperwork they needed to be discharged. To any administrator reviewing the records, everything appeared in order. What nobody saw was that not a single shilling of those payments had entered MTRH’s accounts.

    “The suspect accessed the eCitizen platform to purportedly ‘clear’ the patients’ bills without depositing a single cent into the hospital’s account,” Chirchir told the Eldoret Chief Magistrate, Peter Ndwiga, during a miscellaneous application hearing.

    The scam unravelled not because of a whistleblower or a suspicious patient, but through the painstaking work of MTRH’s internal audit team. On February 5, 2026, auditors flagging discrepancies in the hospital’s accounts stumbled upon the financial void. Thirteen days later, two people were in police cells and detectives were reconstructing over a year of financial subterfuge.

    A Platform Already Under Fire

    The MTRH fraud does not exist in isolation. It arrives against a backdrop of mounting and deeply disturbing revelations about the eCitizen platform itself.

    A sweeping audit by Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu, covering the financial year ending June 30, 2024, found that approximately Sh44.8 billion in eCitizen collections could not be accounted for.

    Discrepancies emerged between what the eCitizen portal showed, what revenue statements reflected, and what ultimately appeared in government ledgers.

    More alarming still, the Auditor-General found that the government does not fully control its own platform. eCitizen, which now processes thousands of government services across more than 220 agencies, was originally developed by a private consortium and handed to the National Treasury in 2017.

    Yet by 2023, a second handover agreement had inexplicably returned effective control back to the vendor, Webmasters Kenya Ltd, leaving the state in the unusual and dangerous position of being dependent on a private company to run its primary digital revenue collection system.

    Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret City.
    Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret City.

    The audit also flagged that four transactions in January 2024 totalling Sh127.85 million were transferred from the official government paybill 222222 directly to private entities, with no documentation, approval trail, or justification.

    A separate Pesaflow Equity Bank account not among Treasury’s approved collection accounts had processed funds whose full scope remains unverified. The National Treasury even failed to provide documents that would have allowed the Auditor-General to assess the eCitizen system’s IT security controls.

    It is within this environment of systemic opacity and fractured oversight that Wachira allegedly found her opening. The MTRH case reveals something chilling: one does not need access to billions to exploit eCitizen’s vulnerabilities. All that may be needed is an employee badge, a position of trust, and the knowledge of which buttons to press.

    A Larger Syndicate? Investigators Think So

    Detectives are not convinced that Wachira and Akida operated alone. Officer Chirchir was explicit before the magistrate: senior officers in MTRH’s Finance and ICT departments are currently under investigation, with investigators probing whether they provided what he described as a “technical backdoor” that allowed the eCitizen system to be manipulated.

    The suggestion is as troubling as it is logical. Manipulating a government payment platform to clear bills without corresponding deposits would, in a properly secured system, require either extraordinary technical access or deliberate configuration of weaknesses.

    “We suspect that this is part of a larger network, and we will pursue all leads,” Chirchir told the court, a statement that will send tremors through MTRH’s corridors as staff members with access to financial and digital systems await the next knock on the door.

    The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has been listed as a third respondent in the case, tasked with assisting in tracing the digital trail. Investigators are combing through CCTV footage, mobile phone records, and M-Pesa and bank statements in an effort to map the full financial network. Key witnesses are yet to record statements.

    Stripped of the procedural language of court hearings and audit reports, this is a story about patients who came to a government hospital for help and were betrayed by the very hands extended to assist them. Men and women who may have scraped together hard-earned money for medical fees walked away clutching receipts that were, in essence, counterfeit.

    The hospital, one of Kenya’s largest and most relied-upon national referral facilities, served thousands during the period the fraud was ongoing, none the wiser that its accounts were haemorrhaging millions.

    MTRH, a 900-bed institution in Eldoret serving as a referral centre for the entire Rift Valley region and beyond, operates under constant resource pressure. The loss of Sh10 million to fraud at a hospital where new mothers have previously been detained for failing to pay SHA fees is not merely a financial crime. It is an institutional wound.

    A Wake-Up Call That Must Not Be Ignored

    “This is a wake-up call for hospitals and government agencies that rely heavily on digital payments. Without proper checks, insider fraud can occur even in major institutions,” Chirchir warned. His words land on a government that has staked enormous political capital on eCitizen as the centrepiece of a digital governance revolution.

    President William Ruto’s “Gava Mkononi” vision, which saw eCitizen’s revenue surge by 300 percent in the months following its expansion, is now confronted with a question as uncomfortable as it is unavoidable: what good is a platform that citizens are made to trust if those on the inside can hollow it out at will?

    Experts who have studied the eCitizen ecosystem point to a pattern that predates this case.

    Research by governance analysts has documented how the platform, despite its streamlined interface, operates in an environment where internal sabotage has repeatedly been used to create dependency on corrupt workarounds. One analysis noted bluntly that the platform “exhibits multiple loopholes, including untraceable transactions, allowing individuals to exploit vulnerabilities.”

    For now, Wachira and Akida are in custody. The auditors are counting. The investigators are watching CCTV. And somewhere in the sprawling digital architecture of the eCitizen system, the question lingers with uncomfortable persistence: how many others?

    CONTEXT: The eCitizen Numbers

    Sh44.8 billion in eCitizen collections were found unaccounted for in the Auditor-General’s 2024 report. Four transactions totalling Sh127.85 million were transferred to private entities from the government’s own paybill 222222 with no documentation. Sh7.05 billion sits in limbo in eCitizen collection and settlement accounts as of June 2024. The MTRH fraud represents Sh10 million of what investigators fear may be a far wider pattern of exploitation.

  • Second Suspect, A Regional Tecno Distributor, Nabbed In Sh28 Million Gold Scam Targeting American Investor, Rogue Lawyer Michael Owano On The Run

    Second Suspect, A Regional Tecno Distributor, Nabbed In Sh28 Million Gold Scam Targeting American Investor, Rogue Lawyer Michael Owano On The Run

    NAIROBI, Kenya — The walls are closing in.

    Barely a week after the first arrest in a brazen gold scam that robbed an American businessman of USD 217,900, detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations have hauled in a second suspect whose role in the scheme is as audacious as it is damning. Mohammed Noor Muhyadhin Mohammed, a Nairobi-based mobile phone trader with business tentacles stretching all the way to Hong Kong, was this week arrested by sleuths from the Operations Support Unit (OSU) for his alleged role in laundering millions of shillings that passed through his hands like sand through a sieve.

    What makes this arrest remarkable is not just the scale of the fraud, now one of the most investigated gold scam networks in recent Nairobi history, but the identity of the man caught in the crosshairs. Mohammed is the sole proprietor of Mohazcom Trading, a registered Kenyan business that sources mobile phones primarily from Tecno Mobile Limited, one of the most recognised handset brands in East and Central Africa.

    The revelation that a legitimate electronics distribution business allegedly served as a conduit for criminal proceeds has sent shockwaves through Nairobi’s trading corridors.

    His arrest follows the February 16 arraignment of Willis Onyango Wasonga, known in shadier circles by the street alias “Marcus,” who now faces a thunderclap of charges at Milimani Law Courts: conspiracy to defraud contrary to Section 317 of the Penal Code; obtaining money by false pretences contrary to Section 313; and three counts under the Proceeds of Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Act (POCAMLA No. 9 of 2009), covering acquisition, possession, and use of proceeds of crime.

    Willis Onyango Wasonga
    Willis Onyango Wasonga

    Wasonga pleaded not guilty and was released on a bond of Ksh 1 million, with the case returning for mention on March 3, 2026. The bond, critics say, was a bargain price for a man accused of engineering a multi-million shilling con.

    The scheme itself reads like a crime thriller.

    An American businessman, John Sodipo, and his Russian associate, Gershonov Oleg, were wooed into a deal for the purchase and chartered export of 495 kilograms of gold to Dubai.

    The promise was glitter. The delivery was dust. Sodipo deposited funds into what he was assured was a legitimate escrow arrangement handled by MOAC Advocates, the law firm of one Michael Otieno Owano, a Nairobi advocate who has now earned the unenviable distinction of appearing at the centre of three separate fraud investigations targeting foreign investors.

    That is where Mohammed enters the picture, and where the story darkens further.

    Investigators have established that on February 3, 2026, USD 217,900 was transferred in a swift transaction from MOAC Advocates’ account at the National Bank of Kenya directly into Mohammed’s company account at the same institution.

    The speed and precision of the transfer raised immediate red flags.

    Within the same breath, Mohammed wired the entire amount overseas to accounts held by Tecno Mobile Limited at Citibank in Hong Kong, purportedly to finance a new shipment of mobile phones that, investigators note pointedly, has yet to set foot on Kenyan soil.

    In a city where Nairobi’s murky gold underworld is estimated to be worth USD 28 billion, making it larger than the country’s entire national budget, the mechanics of laundering criminal proceeds through legitimate-seeming businesses is nothing new.

    What separates this case is the sophistication of the paper trail assembled to cover the crime.

    MOAC Advocates presented detectives with a debt settlement agreement allegedly signed by Mohammed and a second suspect still at large, a document investigators have now dismissed as what they describe as a mere smokescreen, a paper shield crafted to sanitise what was in reality a straightforward money laundering operation.

    The threads connecting Mohammed to the broader syndicate do not end with a single suspicious transfer.

    Investigators have dug deeper and established that he has maintained a decade-long business relationship with a forex bureau operating along Standard Street in the heart of Nairobi’s central business district.

    This bureau, whose proprietor worked in close coordination with Mohammed, is believed to have routinely facilitated substantial cross-border transfers, including the very transaction now under scrutiny. Detectives say the bureau played a key role in the layering and concealment of criminal proceeds, the classic hallmarks of organised money laundering.

    The name looming over everything, however, is that of Michael Otieno Owano.

    Owano, the advocate behind MOAC Advocates, has found himself cast not as a professional servant of the law but as the alleged operational linchpin of a criminal enterprise targeting foreigners.

    His firm’s accounts are now the subject of forensic investigation in connection with three separate fraud operations.

    In November 2024, he was arrested following a Ksh 182 million fake tender scheme that targeted an American firm, Underground Pipeline Rehabilitation Company, with his firm receiving USD 90,000 in purported legal fees while the victim was deceived into paying over USD 1.6 million for fictitious government contracts bearing the names of the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority and the Kenya Meteorological Department.

    He was released on bail while the Director of Public Prosecutions reviewed the matter.

    Nairobi advocate Michael Otieno Owano of MOAC Advocates
    Nairobi advocate Michael Otieno Owano of MOAC Advocates

    In August 2025, Owano was arrested again in connection with a Sh79 million fake gold scheme targeting a Canadian investor, in which a proforma invoice of USD 318,400 was issued by a company called EAI Logistics, with funds wired directly into his firm’s account.

    The victim was also pressured into sending USDT 300,000 in cryptocurrency. In that case, Owano was linked to a Cameroonian national, Francis Ouafo, identified as the mastermind of that operation.

    Now Owano is wanted in connection with this latest case. Detectives are described as being hot on his heels, and sources indicate that three additional suspects remain at large. The rogue advocate has not been publicly apprehended as of press time, and the DCI has confirmed investigations are ongoing.

    Three cases. Three sets of foreign victims. Three sets of criminal allegations. And a man who remains a licensed advocate, bound by the Law Society of Kenya to uphold ethics that, investigators allege, he has systematically trampled underfoot.

    Nairobi’s reputation as a gold scam capital is not a new wound.

    The DCI Director-General himself has described the problem as a huge cartel involving Kenyans, Congolese, Liberians, Nigerians, and Ghanaians, operating in a very sophisticated manner, with the upmarket Kilimani residential area specifically fingered as Africa’s fortress of gold scams.

    The United Nations and international investigative agencies have documented massive discrepancies between what Kenya officially exports in gold and what the UAE alone reports importing from Kenya, suggesting a shadow economy of staggering proportions flowing beneath the surface of the country’s commercial life.

    For Mohammed, the next stop is a magistrate’s court. He is currently in custody, undergoing processing for arraignment. For Wasonga, it is a court date on March 3. For Owano, it is a manhunt that detectives say is closing in by the hour.

    For Kenya, it is a reckoning.

    The country’s credibility as a destination for serious foreign investment depends in part on its ability to chase down and punish the conmen who have turned the promise of gold into a weapon against the very investors the country needs.

    Every shilling stolen from a foreign businessman is not just a personal loss. It is a message broadcast to boardrooms in New York, Toronto, and beyond: that Kenya’s legal system, its licensed professionals, and its registered businesses can be instruments of fraud.

    Whether the courts will deliver that reckoning remains to be seen. What is no longer in doubt is that the DCI is now pulling hard on threads that lead, investigators believe, to a syndicate far larger than the two men so far arraigned.

    The gold was never real. The lawyers may have been. The reckoning is coming regardless.

    The case returns for mention on March 3, 2026.

  • Paul Ndung’u Claims SportPesa Has Wedged Out A Media War Against Him As He Files Appeal In UK Court To Recover His Shares

    Paul Ndung’u Claims SportPesa Has Wedged Out A Media War Against Him As He Files Appeal In UK Court To Recover His Shares

    Paul Wanderi Ndung’u, the Kenyan entrepreneur at the centre of one of Africa’s most explosive corporate battles, has accused SportPesa-linked interests of orchestrating a coordinated media campaign designed to sabotage his ongoing appeal at the UK Court of Appeal, where he is fighting to recover shares he claims were fraudulently stripped from him through an elaborate dilution scheme engineered by Bulgarian directors with alleged ties to international organised crime.

    In a scathing 17-page complaint addressed to the Managing Editor of Nation Media Group and dated January 31, 2026, Ndung’u names Business Daily columnist Jaindi Kisero as the latest weapon in what he describes as a calculated, sponsor-driven assault on his reputation timed to coincide with the most critical stage of his legal battle abroad.

    The complaint, seen by Kenya Insights, is surgical in its counterattacks. Ndung’u does not merely dispute Kisero’s January 30 column. He dismantles it, paragraph by paragraph, producing court orders, affidavits, and documentary evidence to challenge virtually every major assertion the veteran columnist made.

    At stake are shares in SportPesa Global Holdings Limited, a UK-registered company, where Ndung’u was a founding director and 17 percent shareholder before a rights issue in 2019 reduced his stake to a near-invisible 0.85 percent.

    A UK High Court judge, Justice Edward Johnson, found in a November 2025 judgment that the company had breached sections 561 and 562 of the UK Companies Act 2006, laws specifically designed to protect shareholders from predatory dilution.

    Offer letters had been sent to a non-existent address and to an email domain the Communications Authority of Kenya had already suspended for fraud. Ndung’u’s phone never rang while other shareholders were personally called.

    Yet despite these damning findings, Justice Johnson ruled against Ndung’u, concluding he lacked the financial capacity to have subscribed the £170,000 required to take up the shares. It is this baffling conclusion that Ndung’u is now appealing, and it is this appeal, he says, that his enemies are desperate to derail through the press.

    “This and other sponsored pieces, including those by bloggers, are calculated attempts to destabilise me during the pendency of my appeal before the UK Court of Appeal,” Ndung’u writes in the complaint.

    He alleges the Kisero article mirrors content published on the X account of a blogger just four days earlier, suggesting both originate from the same sponsored source.

    The bank evidence that Justice Johnson apparently set aside is staggering.

    Court records show Ndung’u maintained a standing overdraft equivalent to approximately £416,000. His personal account held the equivalent of £500,000. His business account contained over £833,000. He had by early 2023 spent more than £300,000 pursuing the case alone and had committed in writing to invest up to £500,000.

    His legal team has notified the Court of Appeal that Ndung’u is separately owed £2.4 million in cash he invested in SportPesa Holdings Limited in the Isle of Man between 2016 and 2017.

    How a judge can find fraud, document it meticulously, then deny remedy because the victim supposedly lacked funds, funds the victim demonstrably possessed, is a question that now travels to the Court of Appeal.

    Ndung’u is equally brutal about the Kisero article’s characterisation of events in Kenya.

    Kisero wrote that Justice A.K. Ndungu of the Nairobi High Court had “affirmed Milestone Games’ lawful right to use the SportPesa trademark and dismissed claims of fraud and forgery,” declaring the story of the stolen brand legally settled.

    Ndung’u calls this a fabrication.

    He attaches the actual court orders from Justice Ndungu, which show the judge did the precise opposite.

    In September 2022, Justice Ndungu suspended the SportPesa trademark licence issued to Milestone Games Limited and refused to adopt a consent the company had drafted without full board approval.

    Five out of seven BCLB board members had sworn affidavits confirming the board never met to approve Milestone’s licence in the first place.

    This is not a disputed interpretation of a grey ruling. These are court orders with specific operative clauses. If Kisero’s sources fed him the opposite narrative, either they lied to him or he did not ask for the paperwork.

    The broader corporate landscape Ndung’u describes is grotesque in its detail. He alleges that in October 2020, Pevans East Africa Limited directors transferred assets including M-Pesa paybills, shortcodes and funds totalling KES 2.3 billion to Milestone Games Limited in direct violation of subsisting High Court money preservation orders. Safaricom PLC, he claims, facilitated the transfer of paybills and funds despite being formally served with those court orders.

    He filed suit against Safaricom in July 2022. Safaricom, he says, failed to file a defence on more than six separate court occasions, resulting in an interlocutory judgment being entered against it in November 2022.

    The criminal dimension of the saga extends far beyond share certificates and paybills. Guerassim Nikolov, the Bulgarian director who controlled SportPesa and who was deported from Kenya in 2019 alongside fellow director Gene Grand, has been linked by Bulgarian investigative journalists to gangland figures, credit card skimming operations and a 1994 armed kidnapping of Serbian truck drivers.

    Bulgaria’s National Security Agency has described him as one of the main organisers of credit card draining operations worldwide.

    His former lottery business partner in Kenya, Krasen Tenev, was later found guilty of five counts of forgery in Bulgaria and sentenced in absentia to 11 years in prison. Tenev remains on Interpol’s Red Notice watchlist.

    These are the men who sponsored Arsenal and Everton, who plastered their brand across Kenyan stadiums, who presented themselves as legitimate businessmen while, according to financial analysis of Pevans’ 2018 accounts, channelling one-third of operating reserves totalling KES 5.3 billion to related parties offshore.

    In that year alone, KES 1.4 billion flowed to companies wholly owned by Nikolov’s sister. Tech Pitch Limited paid Nikolov personal director’s remuneration of KES 196 million in 2018 while the company’s entire declared wage bill was KES 19.4 million, an accounting impossibility that speaks plainly to what was happening inside SportPesa’s books.

    Despite their deportation, Nikolov and his associates continue to control the SportPesa brand through an ownership structure involving Milestone Games Limited, 72 percent ultimately owned by TPLC Holdings Limited, a UAE Free Zone Establishment controlled by the Bulgarians.

    The deportation was theatrical. The control never ended.

    In Kenya, the fraud has gone beyond corporate documents. The Court of Appeal in April 2025 overturned its own February 2023 ruling after discovering it had been misled by a forged court order.

    The appellate bench, composed of Court of Appeal President Justice Daniel Musinga, Justice Mumbi Ngugi and Justice George Odunga, cited the intricacies of fraud and forgery in its reversal.

    The court found there was no injunction against Ndung’u, that he retained full rights to participate in derivative actions on behalf of Pevans, and that his exclusion from proceedings had violated his constitutional rights under Article 50.

    Following those findings, the Kenyan Judiciary issued a public notice through the Law Society of Kenya warning about criminal activity involving forged court documents, decrees and orders. The notice described a budding criminal activity involving generating and presenting forged court documents with intent to defraud. That notice came after a SportPesa-related case. The Business Daily itself ran an editorial on October 9, 2025 calling on the DCI to probe the fake court orders scandal.

    Ndung’u also lays out a comprehensive trademark fraud case currently before the Constitutional Court.

    He alleges the SportPesa and Spesa trademarks owned by Pevans were transferred to SportPesa Global Holdings Limited, a UK company not registered in Kenya, in violation of multiple statutes including the Companies Act, the Stamp Duty Act and the Tax Procedures Act. No stamp duty was paid. No shareholder approval was obtained. The assignment certificates were backdated. No application fees were paid.

    The goodwill purportedly worth £200,000 was never actually paid. KIPI board chairman Allan Kosgey wrote to Ndung’u’s lawyer Dr Ekuru Aukot in September 2025 acknowledging the complaint and promising compliance with applicable law and regulations.

    Against this backdrop, the Kisero article’s declaration that the litigation is “effectively settled” and that SportPesa can now enjoy an “industry reset” is not merely premature. It is, in Ndung’u’s characterisation, part of the campaign itself.

    Ndung’u demands a full-page paid apology from Kisero and threatens legal proceedings if Nation Media Group does not provide him equal space to rebut the column.

    He has directed his lawyers at Ekuru Aukot and Co to take necessary steps if the matter is not resolved to his satisfaction.

    What remains unresolved is the larger question the UK Court of Appeal must now answer.

    If a court documents that company law was broken, that offer letters were sent to phantom addresses and shut-down email accounts, that directors lied under oath about auditing obligations, that a shareholder with nearly £900,000 in accessible funds was systematically excluded from a rights issue, but still denies remedy, what exactly does corporate law protect?

    For Ndung’u, the answer may come from London. For Kenya, the answer is already written in court files that detail billions transferred in defiance of court orders, trademarks donated without payment, licences issued without board approval, and forged documents filed to manipulate judicial outcomes.

    SportPesa did not merely build a betting empire.

    According to the evidence documented in courts on two continents, it built a machine for stripping shareholders of their stakes, extracting cash through offshore entities, corrupting institutions and then using media, litigation and criminal forgery to bury the evidence.

    The machine is still running. Ndung’u intends to stop it.

  • Iran Demands Arrest, Prosecution Of Kenya’s Cup of Joe Director Director Over Sh2.6 Billion Tea Fraud

    Iran Demands Arrest, Prosecution Of Kenya’s Cup of Joe Director Director Over Sh2.6 Billion Tea Fraud

    Tehran has had enough of Kenya’s foot-dragging.

    More than two years after a brazen Sh2.6 billion tea fraud torched Kenya’s most lucrative tea market in the Middle East, Iran’s Ambassador to Kenya Ali Gholampour is demanding that Nairobi arrest and prosecute Cup of Joe director Joseph Kamau Kiminda — the man at the centre of a scandal that has robbed over 750,000 Kenyan tea farmers of their single most important buyer.

    “In Iran, those involved in the fraudulent scheme have already been tried and punished by the courts, with senior officials and the mastermind receiving lengthy prison sentences and orders to repay billions of dollars to the State,” Ambassador Gholampour told journalists in Nairobi this week, his patience audibly fraying. “Accountability must come first.”

    The envoy’s remarks carry a sting that Nairobi cannot afford to ignore: Tehran has already prosecuted its own ministers, CEOs, and private businesspeople. Kenya has prosecuted nobody.

    THE FRAUD THAT CHOKED A BILLION-SHILLING MARKET

    In 2023, Cup of Joe Limited — a Mombasa-based tea export company whose director Kamau Kiminda had built his reputation as Kenya’s champion of the Iranian tea market — sealed a $20 million deal with Iranian company Debsh Tea Co for premium Kenyan tea.

    What arrived in Tehran was anything but premium.

    Iranian prosecutors uncovered that Cup of Joe had sourced low-grade tea, blended it inside Kenya, and shipped it to Iran mislabelled as high-quality Kenyan produce.

    In a scheme of breathtaking audacity described in Tehran court records as involving “systematic deception, currency manipulation, and smuggling,” Debsh Tea had drawn $3.37 billion from Iran’s government foreign exchange reserves at subsidised rates — ostensibly to import premium tea and machinery. Instead, it pocketed billions, bought the cheapest Kenyan tea it could find, and imported no machinery at all.

    The scheme collapsed spectacularly when Iranian customs officials inspected the consignment. Tehran was furious. Kenya’s most valuable tea relationship — Iran had imported 13 million kilogrammes worth Sh4.26 billion in 2024 alone — was shut down overnight.

    Kenya has not exported a single kilogramme of tea to Iran since 2023.

    IRAN ALREADY JAILED ITS PEOPLE. KENYA JAILED NOBODY.

    The contrast between Tehran’s decisive action and Nairobi’s paralysis is devastating and deserves to be stated plainly.

    In Iran, former Agriculture Minister Javad Sadatinejad was sentenced to two years in prison. Former Trade Minister Reza Fatemi-Amin received one year.

    Debsh Tea CEO Akbar Rahimi-Darabad was slammed with a 66-year sentence — effectively 25 years under concurrent sentencing rules — and ordered to repay $2.38 billion (Sh307 billion) to the Iranian state. Dozens more received sentences ranging from six months to 25 years. By late 2025, Iranian authorities had reissued arrest warrants for those still at large and imposed travel bans and financial restrictions on convicted parties.

    In Kenya, Kamau Kiminda has been summoned for questioning. Once.

    He was called to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations’ Economic Crimes Unit in September 2025, after the Foreign Affairs ministry finally wrote to the DCI on the 25th of that month — a referral that came two years after the scandal broke. The DCI completed its probe by late 2025. Its findings have never been made public.

    No charges have been filed. No arrest has been made. Kiminda walks free.

    Meanwhile, 750,000 smallholder farmers in 19 counties — people who pick tea at dawn and live on the margins of survival — are absorbing the full financial punishment for a fraud they had no part in and cannot understand.

    THE MAN AT THE CENTRE

    Kamau Kiminda is not an innocent bystander stumbled into a crisis. He is the director who personally travelled to Iran, built relationships with Iranian buyers, boasted in 2016 that Iran had become Cup of Joe’s single biggest market, and then presided over a transaction that Iranian prosecutors say was soaked in fraud.

    When cornered by journalists, Kiminda’s defence has been as thin as the low-grade tea his company allegedly shipped.

    “We were contracted by Debsh to source tea, which we did in line with our clients’ instructions,” he told the Daily Nation. “What Debsh did with the consignment after delivery could not be attributed to Cup of Joe.”

    This is the defence of a man who wants credit for the deal but no accountability for its contents. Iranian court documents tell a different story. They describe Cup of Joe as “the crucial intermediary” in the fraud — the Kenyan company that sourced tea through Dubai operations, facilitated payments in both US dollars and UAE dirhams, and used warehouses operated through Chai Trading, a KTDA subsidiary, as storage points for the fraudulent consignments.

    A company found 100 percent compliant during a routine Tea Board inspection — and which later ran to the High Court to challenge the revocation of its licence — does not behave like a company that stumbled into fraud by accident.

    CUP OF JOE WENT TO COURT TO GET ITS LICENCE BACK

    A crucial detail that has received insufficient attention: Cup of Joe did not accept the revocation of its trading licence quietly. The company filed Judicial Review Application No. E363 of 2025 at the High Court in Nairobi in November 2025, seeking orders to quash the government’s revocation of its registration certificate and compel the Tea Board of Kenya to issue it with a fresh licence.

    The application was sworn by Kiminda himself on November 18, 2025.

    In it, Cup of Joe argued that the government had acted unlawfully and violated its constitutional rights in cancelling its licence. The company sought orders of prohibition, certiorari, and mandamus — the full armoury of judicial review relief — to get back into the tea trade.

    Justice R.E. Aburili struck out the application on December 31, 2025 — not on the merits, but because the company had gone to the wrong division of the High Court, having failed to first exhaust the statutory appeal mechanisms under the Tea Act. The judge was explicit: “The main dispute between the parties is still outstanding.”

    In plain language: the case is alive, Kiminda is still fighting to clear his name in court, and the government has yet to prove its case in any formal legal proceeding. Yet Iran is watching and growing angrier by the day.

    POLITICAL PROTECTION?

    The scandal has a political dimension that Kenya’s authorities appear deeply reluctant to confront.

    Cup of Joe’s owner and director has been consistently described by industry insiders and investigative sources as a close business associate of impeached former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua.

    Beyond tea exports, sources indicate that Kiminda has operated in multiple sectors involving Iranian business connections, including the supply of bitumen from Iran to the South African market — connections built years before the tea fraud emerged.

    Gachagua had championed higher tea prices as a signature political promise to his central Kenya base.

    The Mombasa tea auction was allegedly manipulated through artificially high reserve prices that eliminated competition and created an environment in which Cup of Joe flourished as the exclusive conduit for Iranian purchases, even while paying in multiple currencies that should have alarmed every regulator with eyes open.

    Gachagua has since been impeached and removed from office. But the beneficiaries of the political machinery he built appear to be navigating their legal exposure with considerable ease.

    DEADLINES BLOWN, PROMISES BROKEN

    The Kenyan government’s response to this crisis has been a masterclass in the appearance of action.

    In August 2025, Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi and Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe announced a “breakthrough” at the 7th Session of the Kenya-Iran Joint Commission for Cooperation. A bilateral committee was formed. Tea exports to Iran would resume within 60 days, they declared.

    That deadline expired in mid-October 2025. Not a single kilogramme of Kenyan tea has moved to Iran since.

    Iran then escalated. Tehran began pushing for Interpol involvement, signalling that it no longer trusted Kenya to police its own export fraudsters. The Kenyan government, in response, continued scheduling meetings.

    Trade Cabinet Secretary Lee Kinyanjui declared in January 2026 that Kenya was “at the tail end” of resolving the dispute. Ambassador Gholampour’s statement this week suggests Tehran does not share that confidence.

    Agriculture CS Kagwe, when contacted by journalists for comment on the stalled prosecution, acknowledged receipt of queries via WhatsApp but had not responded by the time of publication.

    The numbers demand to be confronted directly.

    Iran was importing Kenyan tea worth Sh4.26 billion a year. Tea exports to Iran grew from 3.2 million kilogrammes in 2020 to a record 13 million kilogrammes in 2024. The abrupt loss of that market, combined with the simultaneous loss of Sudan as a major buyer, is costing Kenya’s tea sector more than Sh6 billion a year in lost revenues. The East African Tea Trade Association estimated losses at over $80 million in 2025 alone.

    These losses are not falling on Kamau Kiminda. They are not falling on the KTDA officials allegedly involved in auction manipulation. They are falling on the woman in Nyeri plucking tea leaves at 6am, on the farmer in Kericho waiting for a bonus that has been slashed because volumes have cratered, on the 6.5 million people — roughly 13 percent of Kenya’s entire population — whose livelihoods depend on the tea industry.

    For those people, every day that Kiminda remains uncharged is another day justice has been denied.

    WHAT IRAN IS ASKING FOR — AND WHY KENYA MUST DELIVER

    Ambassador Gholampour has been diplomatic in his phrasing but unmistakable in his message: Kenya must charge and prosecute those responsible. Without that accountability, the Iranian market will not reopen. Iran cannot tell its citizens and its own courts that it is buying tea from a country that punished the fraudsters with a cancelled business licence and a WhatsApp message left unread.

    Tehran is also exploring permanent market alternatives. India and Sri Lanka are waiting to fill the gap. Every month of Kenya’s inaction makes the permanent loss of the Iranian market more likely.

    The DCI has completed its investigation. The findings are gathering dust somewhere in a government office. The Director of Public Prosecutions has been conspicuously silent. The courts are waiting for a case that has not been filed.

    There is one man who has answers to give and charges to face. His name is Kamau Kiminda. He is not hiding — he went to the High Court less than three months ago.

    The DCI knows where he is. The DPP knows what the investigation found. The question is whether the Ruto administration has the political will to arrest a man with powerful friends, charge him in open court, and tell the world — and the 750,000 farmers waiting for their lost market back — that Kenya does not protect economic saboteurs.

    That question must be answered. Not in 60 days. Now.

  • ‪Nairobi Businesswoman Sues Safaricom After Cash She Mistakenly Sent To Wrong Number Was Used To Offset Recipient’s Fuliza Debt‬

    ‪Nairobi Businesswoman Sues Safaricom After Cash She Mistakenly Sent To Wrong Number Was Used To Offset Recipient’s Fuliza Debt‬

    A businesswoman has moved to the High Court seeking to overturn what she terms an unconstitutional policy by Safaricom PLC that allows money sent in error to be used to settle Fuliza overdraft loans, even where a sender promptly seeks a reversal.

    In a constitutional petition filed at the High Court in Nairobi, Eunice Nganga argues that the telecommunications giant’s handling of erroneous M-Pesa transfers violates multiple constitutional rights and consumer protection laws.

    The petition was placed before Justice Lawrence Mugambi, who has issued directions on service and timelines for responses.

    According to court papers, the dispute stems from a transaction on September 4, 2024, when Nganga mistakenly sent Sh2,700 to the wrong mobile number.

    She says she realised the error almost immediately and initiated a reversal within minutes, in line with Safaricom’s M-Pesa reversal procedure. She also promptly sent the same amount to the intended recipient.

    However, the reversal request was declined on the basis that the unintended recipient’s line had an outstanding Fuliza overdraft.

    Nganga contends that the funds were “automatically deducted by Safaricom to offset the recipient’s Fuliza loan and were never accessed or withdrawn by the recipient”.

    The petitioner further states that when she followed up at a Safaricom retail outlet and later through a formal demand, she was informed that the money could not be refunded and was advised to report the matter to the police.

    She argues that the issue is not criminal in nature, as the recipient did not benefit from the funds, and that the money was instead retained by the service provider.

    In her petition, Nganga claims the policy breaches the right to property, fair administrative action, consumer rights, dignity, freedom of conscience and freedom of association.

    She argues that her “contract with Safaricom does not extend to the recovery of another customer’s debt using her funds, particularly where there was no valid transaction between her and the Fuliza debtor”.

    She has framed the case as one of public interest, asserting that many Kenyans have lost money in similar circumstances when erroneous transfers are used to settle Fuliza debts.

    Nganga is seeking declarations that the policy is unconstitutional and unlawful, orders quashing and prohibiting its implementation, restitution of the Sh2,700, and far-reaching refund orders for other affected customers.

    She has also asked the court to award Sh50 million in general and punitive damages.

    Justice Mugambi directed that the petition be served within seven days, with responses filed within 14 days of service.

    The matter is scheduled for mention on March 25, 2026.

  • KPC IPO Set To Flop Ahead Of Deadline, Here’s The Experts’ Take

    KPC IPO Set To Flop Ahead Of Deadline, Here’s The Experts’ Take

    NAIROBI. The Kenya Pipeline Company initial public offering was meant to be a triumph: a flagship privatisation that would flood Treasury coffers with Ksh106.3 billion, mint up to two million new shareholders, and announce to the world that the Nairobi Securities Exchange had come of age.

    With barely 48 hours left before the subscription window closes on the evening of February 19, 2026, none of that appears likely to materialise without an extraordinary and largely unprecedented surge of last-minute demand.

    As of close of business last Thursday, four independent brokers, all speaking on condition of anonymity citing fear of State reprisals, placed total subscriptions at approximately 10 per cent of the offer, equivalent to roughly Ksh11 billion of the Ksh106.3 billion target.

    For the transaction to proceed at all, regulations require valid applications representing at least 50 per cent of the shares on offer, or Ksh53.1 billion. That means the government must attract nearly five times the volume of orders it has collected across four weeks, within the span of two days. The arithmetic alone makes the case.

    “You know how Kenyans behave, even when the IEBC is registering voters, they all come at the last minute. Let us wait for the final week, I am sure we will have enough investors.” Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi

    Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi has offered what is fast becoming the official line of comfort: Kenyans, he says, behave like procrastinating voters, and the last-minute rush will save the day. It is a colourful analogy.

    It is also, on the available evidence, the fiscal equivalent of wishful thinking.

    Kenya’s most comparable precedent, the Safaricom IPO of March 2008, generated enormous popular enthusiasm from its very opening day, driven by brand recognition, accessible pricing, and a company whose services millions used daily.

    KPC has none of those tailwinds, and its pricing structure has generated precisely the opposite of enthusiasm among professional investors.

    The Valuation Chasm That Doomed Retail Confidence

    The central wound in this offering is not demand, it is price. The government, advised by Faida Investment Bank and Dyer and Blair, set the offer at Ksh9 per share, implying a total company valuation of Ksh163.56 billion. Independent analysts, almost without exception, have arrived at a figure considerably lower. The divergence is not marginal. It is a chasm.

    Old Mutual Investment Group Uganda, in a January 2026 initiation note, values KPC at Ksh4.61 per share, implying a discount of 49 per cent to the offer price and an equity value of Ksh77.4 billion.

    Its methodology is rigorous: a discounted cash flow model using a 16.04 per cent weighted average cost of capital and a 3.0 per cent terminal growth rate produces Ksh4.26 per share; a relative valuation exercise benchmarking KPC against regional utilities including KenGen and Kenya Power, alongside midstream oil operators such as Seplat and Aradel, yields Ksh5.27.

    The blended result is Ksh4.61, with an accumulation band of roughly one shilling either side. The fund manager recommends waiting for a post-listing price correction before entering.

    NCBA Investment Bank has placed fair value at approximately Ksh6.35, arguing the IPO implies a premium earnings multiple for what is, structurally, a mature, regulated utility. Standard Investment Bank valued KPC’s equity at around Ksh102 billion on the post-IPO share base, implying roughly Ksh5.61 per share.

    Its senior research associate Wesley Manambo has offered a buy recommendation, but only for investors with a time horizon of at least seven years.

    For anyone seeking short-term capital appreciation, or even a competitive dividend yield, his language is striking in its candour: the opportunity cost is higher relative to other propositions in the market.

    Wider independent market analysis has produced fair-value ranges as low as Ksh3.28, citing stretched valuation multiples and a dividend yield that cannot compete with double-digit, tax-free government infrastructure bonds currently on offer in the Kenyan fixed-income market. That last point deserves emphasis.

    An investor who allocates capital to KPC at Ksh9 and receives a 50 per cent dividend payout on projected earnings must calculate their yield against instruments that currently offer 14 to 16 per cent, risk-free and tax-exempt. The comparison is brutal.

    Source

    Valuation (KSh/share)

    Stance

    Faida Investment Bank (Lead Advisor)

    9.00

    Buy / Offer price

    Dyer & Blair (Sponsoring Broker)

    9.00

    Buy / Offer price

    NCBA Investment Bank

    6.35

    Below offer / Cautious

    Standard Investment Bank (SIB)

    ~5.61

    Strategic long-term buy

    Old Mutual Investment Group Uganda

    4.61

    Avoid / Post-listing entry

    Independent range (multiple analysts)

    3.28 to 5.41

    Overvalued at offer price

    Table: Independent valuations of KPC versus the government’s offer price of Ksh9.00 per share. Sources: Faida Investment Bank, NCBA Investment Bank, Standard Investment Bank, Old Mutual Investment Group Uganda, independent market analyses.

    The Dividend Cut That No One Is Pretending Is Irrelevant

    KPC is, on its balance sheet, a genuinely impressive asset. The company holds infrastructure worth Ksh163 billion across Kenya’s fuel supply network. It operates 1,342 kilometres of pipeline connecting the Port of Mombasa to Nairobi and landlocked markets including Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan and northern Tanzania, where it commands a 91 per cent market share.

    Its EBITDA margins average roughly 45 per cent. It carries zero debt. It posted a profit of Ksh7.49 billion in its most recent financial year and paid Ksh10.5 billion in dividends to the Treasury.

    That last figure contains its own problem. KPC has historically paid out 94.5 per cent of profits as dividends, a ratio that makes it unusual even by the standards of regulated infrastructure companies globally.

    The offer memorandum proposes reducing that payout ratio to 50 per cent, which would fund a major capital expenditure programme including laying a new pipeline between Mombasa and Nairobi. For income-oriented investors, who represent the natural constituency of a utility IPO, this is not a footnote. It is the entire investment case, and it points in the wrong direction.

    The company is transitioning from a mature cash distributor to an infrastructure builder, right as it is asking the public to value it at a peak multiple.

    At the offer price, an investor is buying a toll road that has just announced it will reinvest most of the tolls, at a valuation that assumes those tolls will grow at rates the market has not corroborated.

    The government will retain a 35 per cent stake. Of the 65 per cent on offer, 20 per cent is reserved for individual Kenyans, 20 per cent for Kenyan institutional investors, five per cent for KPC employees, 15 per cent for oil marketing companies, 20 per cent for East African Community investors, and 20 per cent for foreign and international investors.

    Institutional and international tranches have moved faster than retail, according to multiple brokers, with some segments having oversubscribed early. But the retail portion, which the government had hoped would attract two million first-time equity investors, has been the most conspicuously sluggish.

    The Policy Context: Privatisation as Fiscal Necessity

    The KPC IPO does not exist in isolation. Kenya’s fiscal position is among the most constrained in its history. Annual debt repayments now consume 40 per cent of government revenues.

    The State has simultaneously announced the sale of a 15 per cent stake in Safaricom to South Africa’s Vodacom for Ksh204 billion. Both transactions are part of a broader Treasury strategy to mobilise capital through divestiture, in lieu of tax increases that have already triggered popular protests and a borrowing ceiling that international creditors are watching with diminishing patience.

    The government has also indicated that proceeds from the KPC sale will be channelled through a new National Infrastructure Fund intended to attract further private capital, and that Kenya aims to expand power generation from three million to ten million megawatts. These are ambitious targets. Their credibility depends, at least in part, on whether the KPC IPO is seen by markets as a success or a warning.

    Former Chief Justice David Maraga, among others, has publicly questioned the wisdom of privatising strategic national assets, warning of rising inequality and the risk that productive state enterprises are sold below fair value to benefit narrow interests.

    His concerns are not universally shared, but they reflect a real tension in Kenyan public life between developmental statism and the fiscal pragmatism that constrained governments must practise.

    The Regional Dimension: Uganda’s Stake in the Outcome

    Uganda’s relationship with the KPC offer is more than financial. The country accounts for over 30 per cent of KPC’s throughput and revenue, with more than 90 per cent of Uganda’s fuel imports transiting through Kenya’s pipeline infrastructure.

    President Ruto, at a regional event in late 2025, stated that Uganda would be invited to acquire a stake in KPC as part of a deeper East African integration agenda. The offer memorandum reserves up to 20 per cent of the divested stake for EAC governments.

    Cabinet Secretary Mbadi has noted that Ugandan investors are, by his account, clamouring for more shares and irritated that only 20 per cent of the offer falls within the East African pool.

    It is a notable data point, though it raises an obvious question: if regional institutional demand is as strong as officials suggest, why is the aggregate subscription figure sitting at 10 per cent with 48 hours to go? Either the institutional commitments remain verbal rather than converted into paid applications, or the total picture is considerably more complicated than official statements imply.

    Technology Access: The M-Pesa Bet

    One genuine innovation in this offering is distribution. The government launched Ziidi Trader on February 10, a Safaricom-backed platform allowing M-Pesa users to purchase KPC shares directly from their mobile phones without engaging a broker.

    The offer has also been open for a full month, longer than most Kenyan IPOs, reflecting deliberate efforts to widen access. President Ruto personally promoted mobile participation. The NSE has been on a sharp upward trajectory, posting its largest single-week gain on record in the weeks preceding the offer’s close.

    None of it has been enough to drive meaningful retail volume. Heavy marketing through roadshows, advertising campaigns, and influencer-driven social media activity preceded the launch. Yet the mass-market participation the government was banking on has not materialised at the scale required.

    This is not simply a story about access or awareness. It is a story about price. Kenyans, particularly those with limited disposable income, are unlikely to buy a financial instrument that sophisticated professional analysts value at roughly half its asking price, regardless of how conveniently it is packaged.

    What Happens If The Numbers Do Not Come In

    Under the terms of the offer, the IPO must receive valid applications from no fewer than 250 applicants representing at least 50 per cent of the shares on offer. If that threshold is not met, the transaction cannot proceed on its current terms.

    Regulations permit share reallocation across categories in cases of undersubscription, beginning with local retail investors.

    But reallocation addresses imbalances between categories, not a wholesale shortfall in aggregate demand. If total subscriptions remain near Ksh11 billion by Thursday evening, reallocation provisions offer no remedy.

    The most likely outcomes in a failure scenario are extension of the subscription period, renegotiation of terms, or withdrawal of the offer pending restructuring. Each carries reputational costs. An extension would signal to regional and international capital markets that Kenya’s privatisation programme is in difficulty. A price reduction would be damaging for a government that has staked political capital on the Ksh9 valuation. Withdrawal would be the worst outcome of all: a direct blow to the credibility of the NSE as a venue for major primary issuances, and an implicit validation of every sceptical analyst report that has circulated since the offer opened.

    If subscriptions do not surge in the next 48 hours, the government faces a choice between three bad options. There is no fourth door.

    Faida Investment Bank, the lead transaction advisor, has expressed continued optimism, citing momentum in e-IPO platform enhancements and describing institutional interest as strong.

    Francis Drummond, co-sponsoring broker, said it expected institutions to act on their decisions within the closing days.

    These are not implausible scenarios. Institutional investors do routinely wait until the final hours of a book-build before converting expressions of interest into hard orders. The question is whether the institutions’ eventual commitments will be sufficient to bridge a gap that, as of last week, represented 90 per cent of the total offer.

    Verdict: Structurally Sound Company, Structurally Flawed Offer

    The tragedy of this IPO, if it fails, will not be that KPC is a bad company. It is not. It is a regulated national infrastructure monopoly with dominant market share, healthy margins, a debt-free balance sheet, and strategic importance to an entire region’s energy supply. In different circumstances, it would be an unambiguously attractive listing.

    The problem is price, and more precisely, the gap between what the government believes the company is worth and what the market is prepared to pay. That gap did not emerge after launch. It was visible from the moment independent analysts began publishing their valuations.

    When four distinct research houses, applying different methodologies, converge on a range of Ksh3.28 to Ksh6.35 against an offer price of Ksh9, the message is not ambiguous. Markets work by aggregating information. The information available on KPC says the offer is expensive.

    Treasury CS Mbadi’s voter-registration analogy may yet prove prescient. Stranger things have happened in capital markets. But a miracle requires both faith and mechanics, and right now the mechanics are worrying.

    The government needs applications representing five times current volume in less than two business days. The brokers need their institutional clients to convert intent into cash. The retail investors need a reason to believe they are not paying a 50 to 95 per cent premium above fair value on day one.

    None of those conditions are comfortably in place. What is in place is a deadline, a shortfall, and a government that has tied its fiscal credibility to an outcome the market has been reluctant to underwrite. By Friday morning, Kenya will know which side was rightEast Africa’s largest-ever local-currency equity offering closes Thursday at 5pm. With subscriptions marooned at roughly 10 per cent of the target after four weeks of marketing, the numbers demand an honest reckoning. The government is betting on a last-minute miracle. The market is not convinced..

    Key Facts: KPC IPO closes February 19, 2026 at 5pm. 11.81 billion shares at Ksh9 each. 65% stake sale. Target: Ksh106.3 billion. Minimum threshold: Ksh53.1 billion (50% subscription). Trading start (if successful): March 9, 2026, Nairobi Securities Exchange. Allocation results: March 4, 2026.

  • A Farm in Kenya’s Rift Valley Ignites a National Reckoning With Israeli Investment

    A Farm in Kenya’s Rift Valley Ignites a National Reckoning With Israeli Investment

    SOLAI, Kenya — On a clifftop above the sunken floor of the Great Rift Valley, where rosemary grows in military rows across 520 acres of irrigated earth, Erez Rivkin stands at the center of Kenya’s most combustible land controversy in years.

    The Israeli investor has spent 15 years building what he calls a dream: export greenhouses, packhouses, a quarry, and now a master-planned residential retreat where buyers can purchase a “freehold” cliffside plot, holiday in the valley, and plug into his farming value chain for income.

    Rivkin grows more than 22 crops — rosemary bound for Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, and Dubai among them. “Everything is already done, export is handled, and water is here,” he said of the farm where he has worked for 15 years. 

    Within days of journalist Alex Chamwada’s promotional documentary tour going viral, hundreds of thousands of Kenyans were not admiring the drip irrigation. They were asking whether they were watching the beginning of a settlement.

    The Spark

    Chamwada — a decorated journalist and CEO of Chams Media whose Daring Abroad program on Citizen TV spotlights bold investment stories — posted videos and photos from the site in mid-February 2026, framing Rivkin as an exemplary foreign entrepreneur. The teaser for a full documentary drew enormous traffic. Then it drew fury.

    Online critics described the project as a kibbutz-style settlement, invoking memories of communal farms in Israel.
    Others invoked the 1903 “Uganda Scheme” — in fact proposed for what is now Kenya’s Uasin Gishu plateau — in which British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain offered land to Zionist leader Theodor Herzl as a Jewish refuge from European pogroms.

    The Zionist Congress debated and ultimately rejected the offer in 1905, choosing Palestine instead. For many Kenyans online, the century-old episode wasn’t ancient history. It was a warning.

    PHOTO | COURTESY Israeli investor Erez Rivkin, with media personality Alex Chamwada, at his real estate firm in Solai, Nakuru County.
    PHOTO | COURTESY Israeli investor Erez Rivkin, with media personality Alex Chamwada, at his real estate firm in Solai, Nakuru County.

    “Is a Zionist settlement in East Africa back on the table?” asked one widely shared Instagram reel. Influencer Mumbi Seraki posted: “A new State of Israel in Kenya? Why are guys shocked? Don’t you remember Netanyahu is the one who showed up and saved Uhuru Kenyatta after a clear Raila win?”

    No credible evidence has emerged to support claims of any government conspiracy, and Rivkin’s project appears to be private in nature. But the speed and intensity of the backlash revealed something more durable: the accumulated weight of Kenya’s unresolved land politics, its deepening entanglement with Israeli geopolitical ambition, and a global reckoning with Israeli expansion that the war in Gaza has made impossible to ignore.

    The Shadow of Solai

    The land sits in a region still haunted by disaster. On May 9, 2018, the Patel Milmet Dam burst amid heavy rains, killing at least 48 people.

    It was one of five earthen embankment dams belonging to Mansukul Patel on the private property of his 1,400-hectare commercial rose farm and business, Solai Roses.

    Kenya’s Water Resources Management Authority concluded that none of the dams on the property were properly licensed and were therefore illegal. 

    Families of the 48 people who perished finally received compensation only after agreeing to an out-of-court deal — five years later, in 2023 — with payments of KSh 1.2 million per adult life and KSh 800,000 per child.

    For a community that watched its villages swept away and then waited half a decade for accountability from a corporate farm, the arrival of another large foreign-owned agricultural operation a short distance from the same flood plain was never going to be received quietly.

    Social media posts, unverified but widely shared, alleged that Rivkin’s land acquisition was connected to the tragedy and to undisclosed dealings with senior Kenyan politicians.

    No evidence has been produced to substantiate these specific claims. What they reflect is something harder to dismiss: a community’s earned distrust of powerful investors operating on land where accountability has historically been absent.

    The Legal Tangle

    Kenya’s 2010 Constitution, under Article 65, explicitly prohibits non-citizens from owning freehold land. Foreign nationals are limited to leasehold tenure of up to 99 years, and any purported freehold interest held by a foreigner is automatically converted to such a lease. Companies with foreign shareholders are treated similarly.

    The Great Rift Valley Retreat’s marketing materials — promoting “freehold master-planned” cliffside plots beginning at roughly KSh 1.9 million — have not publicly disclosed the corporate structure or title arrangements behind the development.

    That silence has fed speculation.

    Defenders of the project insist it complies with Kenyan law and creates local employment; the project’s official website, operating under the entity “New Agrodeal Farm,” continues to promote investment openly. As of February 17, 2026, neither the National Land Commission, Nakuru County, nor the national government had issued any statement addressing the project’s land titles or the public uproar.

    Israel’s African Footprint — and Its Failures

    The Solai controversy did not emerge in a vacuum. It landed in a Kenya whose relationship with Israeli investment is, to put it generously, complicated.

    On July 5, 2016, Benjamin Netanyahu kick-started Israel’s scramble for Africa with a historic visit to Kenya, making him the first Israeli prime minister to visit Africa in 50 years.

    The trip was laden with strategic candor. Netanyahu was explicit with Israeli ambassadors stationed across the continent: “The first interest is to dramatically change the situation regarding African votes at the UN and other international bodies from opposition to support. There are 54 countries in Africa; we want to erode the opposition and change it to support.”  Netanyahu stated that Israel’s goal was to use “trade, technology and investments” to entice African states to vote in favor of Israel at the United Nations and other international organizations. 

    Between 2015 and 2023, the UNGA passed 154 resolutions against Israel, compared with 71 against all other countries combined.  The diplomatic stakes could not have been higher.

    Kenya became the continent’s most important pivot point.

    The flagship expression of that strategy was the Galana-Kulalu Food Security Project — an Israeli firm, Green Arava, contracted to develop a model farm on 10,000 acres at the Galana-Kulalu irrigation scheme, meant to be a precursor to expanding production on one million acres.

    The contract was single-sourced, meaning that Kenyans did not carry out competitive bidding.

    By the time Arava threw in the towel, the State had already paid the contractor Sh5.9 billion out of the Sh6.35 billion loan from Israel’s Bank Leumi.

    Green Arava managed to cultivate only 500 acres before the National Irrigation Authority terminated the contract, citing slow implementation and inflated costs.  President Ruto later admitted the project was “a scam.”

    Undeterred, Kenya’s Foreign Affairs Minister Musalia Mudavadi was by August 2024 announcing a new 25-year land lease arrangement with Israeli agricultural investors for wheat production, described as “a private-private arrangement which will only be guaranteed by the two governments through giving necessary logistics and a conducive environment.”   The same logic, the same sector, the same country.

    A Geopolitics of Soil

    Israel’s ambitions in East Africa have expanded even as its global image has contracted since October 2023. After it began its war on Gaza, whatever fragile support Israel had on the continent largely collapsed. South Africa accused Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice in December 2023. The African Union was unequivocal in its condemnation.

    Yet Israel has pressed forward. In December 2025, Israel became the first country to recognize the Republic of Somaliland as an independent state, with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar signing the declaration.

    Channel 12 in Israel reported that ties between the two governments emerged partly as Israel searched for countries willing to take in Gazans it was looking to move out of the Strip during the war.

    The African Union Commission Chairperson warned that the recognition risks creating a “dangerous precedent with far-reaching implications for peace and stability across the continent.” 

    The aid-as-leverage dynamic has a documented precedent.

    When Senegal co-sponsored a 2016 UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Netanyahu recalled Israel’s ambassador to Dakar and cancelled Mashav drip-irrigation projects in the country — projects that had been “widely promoted as a major part of Israel’s contribution to the ‘fight against poverty in Africa.’” Israel has particularly set eyes on East Africa, especially Ethiopia, home to 160,000 Ethiopian Jews.

    The Israeli aid agency Mashav sent aid worth $45.5 million to Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, and Kenya between 2009 and 2021, according to OECD data. Aid often went towards agriculture, water, and healthcare.

    Kenyans who have watched this history unfold are not being paranoid in asking what is transactional and what is development.

    Against this backdrop, Nakuru County’s simultaneous pursuit of Israeli partnerships in agri-tech, water management, and training — confirmed in county statements involving Israeli Ambassador Gideon Behar — reads differently than it might have five years ago.

    For Kenyans watching a viral video of a thriving Israeli-owned farm on a valley clifftop, the context is not abstract. It is immediate.

    The Divide

    Kenya has worked with Israeli agricultural experts for decades, particularly in drip irrigation and greenhouse technology.

    Supporters argue this is simply foreign investment meeting local opportunity, bringing jobs, skills, and higher yields. Both positions contain some truth. And that is precisely the problem.

    Rivkin’s operation appears genuinely productive. His 15-year presence in Kenya suggests real commitment to the land, not extraction and exit. These are not nothing.

    But Kenya’s land is never merely agronomic. It is biographical. Colonial dispossessions, post-independence resettlement conflicts, elite land captures, and post-election violence have made every large foreign-owned estate a political object, regardless of what grows on it.

    The proposal to establish youth exchange programs between Kenyan and Israeli teenagers at the site — and Rivkin’s mention of possibly relocating an Israeli school to Solai — amplified rather than allayed the concerns of critics who see the project’s horizon extending far beyond rosemary exports.

    Neither Rivkin nor his representatives have publicly clarified these proposals in the context of the controversy.

    Chamwada, whose journalism has long celebrated entrepreneurial ambition, has not publicly addressed the backlash. His framing of Rivkin’s venture as an inspiring investment story collided with a public not, right now, inclined to admire Israeli ambition on African soil without harder questions.

    Whether the collision was foreseeable, and whose responsibility it was to anticipate it, is a question for Kenyan journalism to answer.

    What Remains Unanswered

    The Great Rift Valley Retreat’s corporate ownership structure and title arrangements have not been made public.

    The National Land Commission has not addressed whether a non-citizen can legally be the ultimate beneficiary of a “freehold” residential development. Nakuru County has not explained what due diligence it conducted alongside its Israeli partnership engagements.

    Rivkin has not answered the question his own marketing raised.

    What Kenya has, as of this writing, is a 520-acre farm at the epicenter of two unresolved national conversations: who controls the land, and what obligations come with being allied to a country the world is watching with unprecedented scrutiny.

    Those conversations will outlast this news cycle. The valley is patient. The questions are not.

  • ‪Director of Right Choice Tours and Safaris Charged with Scamming Clients Over $16,000‬

    ‪Director of Right Choice Tours and Safaris Charged with Scamming Clients Over $16,000‬

    The Director of Right Choice Tours And Safaris has been charged before a Nairobi court for allegedly obtaining USD 16,708 from tourism clients under false pretences.

    George Ogunda Okech was arraigned before Magistrate Irene Thamara, where the prosecution alleged that on diverse dates between December 8, 2025 and January 20, 2026, at Town House in Nairobi’s Central Business District, he unlawfully obtained USD 12,450 from one of his clients.

    According to the prosecution, Okech, in his capacity as Director of the tour company, falsely represented to Jean Jacques that he would organize and facilitate tourist activities for him and his colleagues in various parts of the country, thereby inducing him to part with the funds.

    He faces a second count of unlawfully obtaining USD 4,258 from another client, Youakim Alexandre, by similarly claiming he would arrange tourist activities in different destinations across Kenya.

    The accused denied the charges.

    The court released him on a bond of Ksh 500,000 with an alternative cash bail of Ksh 100,000. The matter is scheduled for mention and further directions on March 4, 2026.

  • Serial Fraudster Willis Wasonga Arraigned After Sh28 Million Gold Scam Linked to Rogue Lawyer Michael Owano

    Serial Fraudster Willis Wasonga Arraigned After Sh28 Million Gold Scam Linked to Rogue Lawyer Michael Owano

    NAIROBI, Kenya — A man described by detectives as a seasoned con artist has been hauled before a Nairobi court after allegedly masterminding a sophisticated gold scam that robbed an American businessman of USD 217,900, approximately Sh28 million, in what investigators are calling one of the most brazen cases of money laundering and fake gold dealing to hit the capital in recent memory.

    Willis Onyango Wasonga, who allegedly goes by the street alias “Marcus,” was arraigned at Milimani Law Courts where he pleaded not guilty and was released on a bond of Ksh 1 million with two sureties, or an alternative cash bail of Ksh 350,000.

    His freedom, however, may be short-lived. Detectives are still closing in on multiple accomplices, and the case returns to court on March 3, 2026.

    Willis Onyango Wasonga
    Willis Onyango Wasonga

    What makes this case particularly explosive is the reappearance of a name that Kenyan authorities know all too well: Nairobi advocate Michael Otieno Owano of MOAC Advocates, a lawyer who has now found himself at the center of not one, not two, but three separate fraud investigations spanning foreign victims from the United States, Canada, and beyond.

    Owano, it appears, has turned the sacred trust of legal practice into a personal criminal enterprise.

    The scheme began innocuously enough.

    A Russian national, Gershonov Oleg, first visited Kenya in September 2025 to pursue a gold transaction that, from the very beginning, was nothing but a carefully constructed illusion.

    During that trip, he was introduced to Wasonga, the man investigators now identify as the principal architect of the fraud.

    Wasonga, charming and calculated, groomed Oleg and his American business partner John Sodipo with the kind of confidence that only a practiced swindler possesses.

    Negotiations between Sodipo and Wasonga for the purchase and subsequent chartering of 495 kilograms of gold to Dubai soon followed.

    The deal was dressed up in the language of legitimacy: agreed timelines, formal terms, and crucially, an escrow arrangement funnelled through none other than Owano’s law firm.

    Sodipo deposited the agreed chartering fees into what he believed was a secure escrow account handled by a licensed advocate. Oleg flew back to Kenya to personally oversee the shipment.

    The gold, of course, never came.

    As the agreed shipment deadline came and went, excuses piled up. Pressure mounted. And then, as investigators describe it with chilling precision, it dawned on the two foreigners that they had been dealing with what the DCI report characterises as “seasoned Machiavellian scammers with dark triad characteristics,” men for whom manipulation is not a tactic but a way of life, men entirely detached from the human consequences of their actions.

    Investigators tore apart the syndicate’s methods with forensic determination.

    At the heart of their operation was SRK Logistics Limited, a logistics company that allegedly misrepresented its entire capacity to supply gold.

    Fictitious legal representation agreements were manufactured wholesale to give the fraud a veneer of respectability, with MOAC Advocates falsely presented as handling legitimate commercial transactions.

    Most damningly, detectives established that the funds deposited by the victims were rapidly moved between company accounts before being spirited overseas in a pattern that investigators say bears every hallmark of money laundering, including the layering and concealment of the proceeds of crime.

    This is not Owano’s first brush with such accusations, and that fact deserves to be stated plainly.

    In November 2024, the same lawyer was arrested by DCI detectives in connection with a Ksh 182 million fake tender scheme that targeted an American company, Underground Pipeline Rehabilitation Company.

    In that case, Owano’s firm received USD 90,000 in purported legal fees while his victim was deceived into paying a staggering USD 1,617,200 for fictitious government tenders, including fabricated contracts from the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority and the Kenya Meteorological Department.

    He was released on cash bail while the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions reviewed the matter.

    Then in August 2025, Owano was arrested again, this time by the Operations Support Unit of the DCI, in connection with a Sh79 million fake gold scheme targeting a Canadian investor.

    In that operation, a Proforma Invoice of USD 318,400 was issued by a company called EAI Logistics, with funds wired directly into Owano’s law firm account.

    The victim was also pressured into sending USDT 300,000 to a cryptocurrency wallet. No gold arrived.

    That case linked Owano to a syndicate that included a Cameroonian national, Francis Ouafo, described as the mastermind of the operation.

    The pattern is unmistakable and deeply disturbing.

    A licensed advocate, bound by the Law Society of Kenya to uphold the highest ethical standards, has allegedly made his law firm a revolving door for criminal proceeds targeting foreign investors.

    Nairobi advocate Michael Otieno Owano of MOAC Advocates
    Nairobi advocate Michael Otieno Owano of MOAC Advocates

    Three cases. Three sets of foreign victims. Hundreds of millions of shillings alleged to have passed through his accounts. And yet the man remains in practice.

    As for Wasonga, he demonstrated one notable instinct for self-preservation.

    As investigations tightened around him, he ran to the High Court and secured anticipatory bail before voluntarily presenting himself at DCI Headquarters on February 13, 2026, to record a statement.

    It was a move that speaks less to innocence and more to a man who understood exactly what was coming.

    The DCI has confirmed that investigations are ongoing and that more suspects are being pursued.

    The syndicate behind these scams, which has now claimed victims from the United States, Canada, and Gabon, represents a sophisticated criminal network that has turned Kenya into a hunting ground for foreign investors lured by the promise of gold, government contracts, and profitable deals.

    For every legitimate businessperson seeking opportunity in Kenya, these men and their networks are a stain on the country’s reputation. For Owano and Wasonga, the courts now await.

    The case returns for mention on March 3, 2026.

  • Ruto Orders Creation Of New Nairobi Metropolitan Police Unit In 60 Days

    Ruto Orders Creation Of New Nairobi Metropolitan Police Unit In 60 Days

    President William Ruto has directed the Interior Ministry to develop a framework for a dedicated Nairobi Metropolitan Police Unit within 60 days, signalling a major shift in the capital’s security architecture.

    Speaking at State House, Nairobi on Tuesday where he outlined details of the enhanced cooperation between the national government and Nairobi City County, the President said security remains central to the transformation of the capital into a modern, globally competitive metropolis.

    “Security is non-negotiable for a modern capital like Nairobi. I therefore direct the Cabinet Secretary for Interior to prepare and present, within 60 days, a framework for a dedicated Nairobi Metropolitan Police Unit,” Ruto said.

    “We will make Nairobi safe for citizens, visitors, investors, and businesses alike.”

    The proposed Metropolitan Police Unit is expected to provide a specialised, coordinated security presence tailored to the unique demands of the capital, which hosts key government institutions, diplomatic missions, international organisations and major commercial hubs.

    Ruto linked the security initiative to a broader intergovernmental partnership already underway between the national and county governments.

    He cited the Nairobi River Regeneration Program as an example of ongoing collaboration, describing it as a Sh50 billion initiative aimed at transforming riverine settlements through housing, sanitation, public spaces and environmental restoration.

    According to the President, the program has also created employment for more than 45,000 young people.

    “Our cooperation with the Nairobi City County Government is not beginning today,” Ruto said, noting that the new measures are designed to scale up existing efforts rather than introduce entirely new arrangements.

    Ruto announced that the structured partnership will be backed by an initial quantified capital package of approximately Sh80 billion across priority sectors.

    The investment is intended to address critical infrastructure and service delivery gaps in the capital, including street lighting, water supply, sanitation, waste management and urban mobility.

    “Taken together, these enhanced cooperation measures will make Nairobi more livable, more secure, and more efficient,” Ruto said.

    He added that the interventions would elevate the city’s stature and strengthen its competitiveness on the continental stage.

    Ruto said the overarching goal is to position Nairobi as “a capital worthy of the Republic it serves — orderly, functional, competitive, and globally respected,” reflecting Kenya’s national ambition and inspiring confidence among both local and international stakeholders.

  • Sakaja To Work Under Mudavadi In New Deal With Ruto For Nairobi County Functions

    Sakaja To Work Under Mudavadi In New Deal With Ruto For Nairobi County Functions

    Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja has formally agreed to serve as the deputy of Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi on a powerful new joint steering committee for the capital, in the most dramatic restructuring of the city’s governance since the controversial Nairobi Metropolitan Services era.

    The bombshell arrangement, sealed at a high-profile ceremony at State House on Tuesday afternoon and witnessed personally by President William Ruto, places the elected governor of Africa’s fourth-largest city in a subordinate role to a national government official who does not hold an elected county mandate.

    The cooperation agreement, backed by Sh80 billion in projected investment, was signed by Mudavadi on behalf of the national government and Sakaja on behalf of Nairobi City County.

    It formalises a joint governance framework that critics say blurs the constitutional lines defining Kenya’s devolved system, even as its architects insist it represents nothing more than a funding boost for a cash-strapped city.

    “What we are formalising today is not a transfer of functions. Let me repeat, there is no transfer of functions taking place. For the avoidance of doubt, I have no interest in running the city; my hands are already full,” Ruto declared at the ceremony, in remarks that his supporters found reassuring and his detractors found unconvincing.

    Under the two-tier structure established by the pact, a Joint Steering Committee chaired by Mudavadi with Sakaja deputizing will set overall policy direction and coordinate national ministries and agencies with county officials.

    A second-tier Implementation Committee, comprising Nairobi County Executive Committee members and national Principal Secretaries, will oversee day-to-day project execution.

    For a governor who spent three years loudly proclaiming that Nairobi would never again be run from State House, Tuesday’s signing ceremony represented a politically jarring reversal.

    Only six days earlier, at the Nairobi County Assembly, Sakaja had thundered that the NMS era was a “defilement of devolution” that saddled the county with Sh16 billion in pending bills and broke the spirit of the public service.

    “In 2020, Nairobi got into a misadventure. The NMS experiment left us with a Sh16 billion hole in pending bills, low staff morale due to mistreatment and a defilement of devolution,” Sakaja told MCAs on February 11, in what now reads as either a prescient warning or an elaborate setup for Tuesday’s ceremony.

    The governor was at pains to reframe the deal in terms sharply distinct from that dark chapter. “This is not an NMS takeover. That was a misadventure that left behind Sh16 billion in debt. This is not a transfer of function. This is a cooperation that recognises Nairobi as the nation’s capital,” he said. “It demonstrates that, 13 years later, the President has heard us.”

    But the question of whether Nairobians were consulted before their governor agreed to sit underneath a national government appointee in the management of their city is already proving divisive.

    Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna, who learnt of the signing from a media invite and not from City Hall, was unambiguous in his fury.

    “The Governor of Nairobi assured us he wasn’t transferring any functions to the National Government. I’m surprised to see a scheduled signing ceremony at State House this afternoon,” Sifuna posted on X as the ceremony was underway. “As we await to see what the actual thing is, I remind Sakaja Johnson to be mindful of the provisions of the Constitution and the need for involvement of the electorate and the leadership of Nairobi prior to making such decisions. Any unconstitutional clawback to devolution shall be strenuously resisted. A comprehensive statement shall follow.”

    The senator’s concerns are grounded firmly in the Constitution. Under Article 187, the transfer of a county function to the national government requires a formal deed of transfer, approval by the County Assembly, and proof that the function can be more effectively performed nationally. No such deed has been tabled before the Nairobi County Assembly, and Sifuna has made clear he has seen neither the deed nor an assembly resolution.

    Principal Secretary for Housing and Urban Development Charles Hinga added fuel to the fire last week when he told a city diplomacy forum that it was only a matter of time before the government fully took over Nairobi. “Nairobi is not a county but a capital city, so collaboration with the national government is inevitable despite what people say,” Hinga said, adding that the city under the current arrangement was “dysfunctional.” His remarks were widely seen as laying the political groundwork for exactly the kind of deal signed on Tuesday.

    President Ruto tried to smother the flames, assuring Kenyans that the agreement would be subjected to public participation and scrutiny by the Nairobi County Assembly before full implementation. “The sooner we start, the sooner Nairobians benefit from modern infrastructure and efficient city management,” he said.

    The pact, anchored on Section 6 of the Urban Areas and Cities Act 2019 which recognises Nairobi as Kenya’s capital city and mandates intergovernmental cooperation on funding and service delivery, spans five key sectors. Solid waste management will see a city-wide garbage collection system go live on April 1, backed by a 3,500-member “Green Army” and a new treatment plant at the Ruai facility capable of converting waste into power and fertiliser. Road infrastructure commitments include the rehabilitation of 62 kilometres of city roads through the Kenya Urban Roads Authority at a dedicated cost of Sh2.1 billion. On water and sewerage, the Athi Water Works Development Agency will lead long-term supply projects including a new dam in Maragua, the Northern Collector II Tunnel, and expansion of trunk sewer lines. The national government has committed to settling public lighting bills on all nationally-funded road projects. Ruto also announced contracts for 110,000 housing units in Nairobi City County, a Sh5 billion modern market at Gikomba, and construction of hostels to accommodate 14,000 students.

    Sakaja cited New York and Paris as capitals that receive substantial national government support while remaining under locally elected leadership, arguing that Nairobi was entitled to no less. He pointed to an increase of 140 million litres of water per day through the Northern Collector Tunnel as an early fruit of the collaboration, with plans underway to add nearly 200 million additional litres daily through upcoming projects.

    The deal is the first capital-specific intergovernmental framework of its scale since devolution began in 2013. Its architects call it a defining moment in Nairobi’s urban history. Its critics call it devolution’s most sophisticated undoing yet, dressed up in the language of cooperation.

    What is beyond dispute is this: for the first time since the NMS era that Sakaja himself called a defilement, the governor of the capital city will be sitting at a committee table, and Musalia Mudavadi will be at its head.

  • Ugandan Charged in Nairobi Over Sh223 Million Fake Gold Scam

    Ugandan Charged in Nairobi Over Sh223 Million Fake Gold Scam

    A Ugandan national has been arraigned in Nairobi over an alleged Sh223 million fake gold scheme that prosecutors say targeted a foreign investor in a high-value bullion deal gone wrong.

    Steven John Waiswa was charged before Senior Resident Magistrate Irene Thamara at the Milimani Law Courts with obtaining USD 1,271,200.74, approximately Sh223.7 million, from Tanner Caldwell Cook by falsely claiming he was in a position to sell 2,820 kilogrammes of gold.

    According to the charge sheet, the alleged offence was committed between March 31 and May 30, 2024 within Nairobi, jointly with others not before court.

    The prosecution contends that Waiswa misrepresented his ability to deliver the consignment of gold, a fact he allegedly knew to be false at the time he received the funds.

    He also faces a separate count of conspiracy to steal the same amount from the complainant.

    Waiswa denied the charges in court. He was released on a Sh2 million bond with one Kenyan surety of a similar amount. In the alternative, the court granted him a Sh500,000 cash bail option and directed him to provide two contact persons. He was further ordered to deposit his passport in court as an additional safeguard.

    The case will be mentioned on March 11, 2026 for consolidation with another similar matter, suggesting investigators believe the alleged scheme may be linked to a broader pattern of fraudulent gold transactions.

    Kenya has in recent years witnessed a surge in fake gold scams targeting foreign investors, often involving elaborate documentation, staged warehouse inspections and forged export permits. Authorities have repeatedly cautioned buyers to verify mineral export licences and conduct due diligence through official state agencies before committing large sums of money.

    If convicted, Waiswa faces penalties under the Penal Code provisions relating to obtaining money by false pretences and conspiracy to commit a felony. Prosecutors are expected to rely on financial transaction trails and communication records when the matter proceeds to hearing.