Category: Investigations

By Lionel Faull 

Following George Floyd’s disturbing death and the riots in Minneapolis, Anonymous has taken over Twitter with jaw-dropping revelations about top celebrities. Naomi Campbell —one of the original supermodels of the 1980s — was dragged into the controversy when the hacktivists linked her to Jeffrey Epstein along with Donald Trump and many others.

On Twitter, they blamed several people in power for the recent violence against black people in the United States. Not just that, they released a document and named it Jeffery Epstein’s Little Black Book. The leaked document names Campbell along with Trump, Ivanka Trump, Prince Andrew, Phil Collins, and Tony Blair.

In the leaked pictures, Trump and Epstein could be seen together while enjoying at a party. The documents say a woman filed a complaint stating that when she was a 13-year-old Trump and Epstein allegedly raped her. No sooner did the documents start to do the rounds on Twitter, people expressed their shock. “Am I reading this correctly? It’s so disgusting to see so many women on this list. Especially when so many young girls were the ones being exploited.

In that list, two Kenyans we’re foreign nationals are named, Gallman Kuki, 81 is named as of those who were in the sex ring.

Kuki Gallman established a vast ranch, owns and runs the famous 100,000 acre Ol Ari Nayiro ranch. Its in Laikipia County. That’s almost the size of a district.

In 2017, Kuki was attacked and badly wounded while patrolling her vast land. The attack on Kuki resulted in a police crackdown on suspected perpetrators, local politicians Thomas Minito and Mathew Lempurkel. The two were arrested several times & charged with offenses varying from incitement to violence to the murder of rancher Tristan Voorspuy.

On May 16th, Mr Minito, who was the MCA for Chuyo Amaya, was picked up by people claiming to be police officers. 4 days later, his dead body was found on Ol Donyo Sabuk river, hundreds of kilometres from home.

Minito and Kuki had been at loggerheads over an access road cutting through Kuki’s ranch. She saw it as encroachment on her land. Mordecai Ogada, author of ‘The Big Conservation Lie’ sees lack of access routes for pastoralists as one of the biggest problems.

The Pokots accused Kuki of exploiting and treating them badly for ages. “She has a colonial mindset,” they say. Kuki has been in the Centre of land disputes where the locals claim they were invaded by the whites.

“The widely publicised recent invasions of wildlife conservancies in Laikipia County in Kenya have often been framed as conflicts between pastoralist communities and conservationists. However, the conflicts in Laikipia and elsewhere in northern Kenya ought to be looked at as a national security issue exacerbated by historical land injustices and the pursuit of an inappropriate conservation model that relegates the true owners of the resources to the periphery.” Gitau Mbaria writes.

“Individuals and organisations that constitute the country’s conservation fraternity have capitalised on officialdom’s disinterest by experimenting with a conservation model that is harmful to the communities there. With financial support from multilateral and bilateral donors, as well as big-bucks international NGOs, the fraternity has literary taken over and has been running not just conservation, but also security, livestock marketing and conflict resolution in a manner that greatly interferes with the sovereignty of the communities that claim ownership of the land there.” He continues.

Injustices of the land in Laikipia has been a topic that not many are willing to touch as it also involves a string of The Who abs who’s in the country as Gitau explores.

“In Land Deals in Kenya: The Genesis of Land Deals in Kenya and its Implication on Pastoral Livelihoods – A Case Study of Laikipia District, 2011, John Letai says that Laikipia has “profound inequalities” in land ownership, with 40.3% of the land being controlled by 48 individuals. Among the biggest landowners in Laikipia include Gallman, whose Ol Ari Nyiro ranch is said to be 100,000 acres. Other large ranches include the Ol Pejeta ranch (92,000 acres) that was once associated with Saudi billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and the Ol Jogi ranch (67,000 acres) owned by the late French billionaire art dealer Daniel Wildenstein. But even with this kind of inequality, it has been apparent that the ranchers cannot countenance the idea of ever giving up the giant parcels of land to the original owners. Some have been offloading the land to other rich people (some of whom are foreigners) while top business and political elites in the country have also increasingly acquired land there.”

“Another approach has been to front the sprawling ranches as important wildlife conservation areas. Targeted in this approach is a powerful and moneyed audience in the West that has contributed immensely to support wildlife conservation in cash and kind. Initially, the white ranchers had not taken wildlife conservation as seriously. For a long time, many had taken to large-scale livestock keeping but later realised that they stood to gain much more by converting their properties to either mixed livestock-and-wildlife areas or to exclusive wildlife conservation zones.”

Here’s the dirty game, this led to a “carefully laid out and presented plan” to secure the future of wildlife in these vast lands and to get financial support from private and institutional donors. To avoid paying taxes and to continue enjoying the largesse of global supporters of wildlife conservation, many of the Laikipia ranchers registered their conservancies as non-profit organisations. Today, Ian Craig’s Lewa Conservancy and Kuki Gallman’s Ol-Ari Nyiro Conservancy are registered as non-profit outfits. However, this is a misnomer because many of them run exclusive, high-end lodges and camps that charge tens of thousands of shillings daily to tourists.

Jeffrey Epstein Sex scandal

Billionaire Epstein was involved in the trafficking, rape and torture of children worldwide for entertainment. While serving his jail term for the crimes, Epstein was found dead in what was reported as a suicide despite having strangle marks on his neck. America’s President, Donald Trump was fingered by the Anonymous group for being responsible for the murder of child-sex offender Epstien who died of apparent suicide while in jail awaiting trial.

You had Jeffrey Epstein killed to cover up your history of child trafficking and rape. We've have the recipts here: https://t.co/zYnSn3kCNe

https://t.co/rfqlmd4Mm4

— Anonymous (@YourAnonCentral) May 31, 2020

Kaki having been named in Epstein’s alleged inner circle of sex traffickers, the details are scanty as nothing is said beyond the address and acknowledgment by the author. What perhaps could be interesting and give the closest link home is the relationship with Naomi Campbell who has also been named in the inner ring. Of interests could also be her vast chain of hotels and if they were used in the trade as alleged.

Naomi is a frequent guest in Malindi where many Italians in Kenya live, Kaki is also an Italian national. Whether Kenyan intelligence is aware of this ring or whether they’ll investigate her is yet to be known, what we’re sure is she was listed in the leaked document as one of those in Epstein sex trafficking ring that involved selling young girls to wealthy naughty men worldwide.

Interestingly, Nick and Heather Day’s Il Pinguin ranch the company named in the Epstein’s black book, sits right in Laikipia country where Kaki’s Ol-Ari Nyiro ranch is. If we’re to make a connection then it’s in the ranches and if any investigations to ascertain these claims then that’s the starting point. Which would lead to a bigger role being played by the ranches in the. Nick and Heather Day also are Ireland nationals. Use the ranch as their home too.

In December 2018 the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) prosecuted the directors of Madras Security Printers Private Ltd over conspiracy with Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs) officials to defeat the intent of the contract for the supply of Impact Standardisation Mark (ISM) stamps for Sh882 million.

“Investigations have established that the award of the contract to Madras Security Printers Private Ltd was marred with irregularities and illegalities,” the DPP says in court papers.

A probe by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) found that the Kebs ISM stickers supplied by the Indian firm did not have a traceability system. They were also not tamper-proof as required by the contract — they are made using ordinary adhesive papers.

The stickers could and up to date can easily be duplicated by the owners of counterfeit products, thus creating a loophole to saturate the market with substandard goods that endangers safety of the consumers.

“Due to failure to comply with the terms of the contract, sub-standard goods have been recovered from the market and individuals subsequently charged with possession of counterfeit Kebs ISM stickers,” says the DPP.

The new stamps were supposed to fully contain entry of counterfeit and illicit goods that have caused the country to lose an estimated Sh100 billion annually.

It was intended that they would be traceable to Kebs, with the number of stamps issued strictly controlled by the standards body.

Further, the stamps were to be printed to certain international approved security specifications — be tamper-proof and not be duplicatable or easily photocopied. They were equally supposed to be easily distinguishable by the general public by use of the Kebs ISM scanner, a mobile phone application.

While the scanner could easily read the details of a product, the importer, the Certificate of Conformity (COC) number, the country of origin and other relevant information, that data was not expected to be read from a duplicate, a photocopy or a counterfeit of the ISM stamp.

However, the substandard stamps could easily be duplicated, photocopied and still retain the security features on the copy that were readable by Kebs scanners.

In the long run, the ignorance and greed within the concerned authorities is coming to haunt the Economy in 2020 and now the National Assembly is expected to begin summoning concerned heads of departments at the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) and the Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs).

The chief executives of the firms suspected to be involved in the tax evasion that is said to be bleeding the country at least Sh10 billion per year are also to be summoned.

The matter reached the floor of the House two weeks ago as it emerged that a questionable consignment of empty bottles used for packaging alcoholic spirits had been received in the country with no corresponding bottle tops and stamps to be used to monitor tax collection on the drinks.

The chairperson of the National Assembly’s Committee on Finance and National Planning, Joseph Limo, said the request for a statement issued by Ruaraka MP T.J. Kajwang had been received for “urgent action”.

“Tax issues are very serious so we will deal with it very decisively and as soon as possible since the country is in need of every tax collectable now,” said Mr Limo, who is also the Kipkelion East MP.

The Ruaraka legislator had asked the committee to train its guns on some 10 companies he accused of playing a central role in the tax evasion.

“The firms involved are Zheng Hong, Patiala Distillers, Hill Kenya Ltd, Mount Kenya Breweries, Saiwan Enterprises, Vine Park FRM, Platinum Distillers, Moonwalk Investments Ltd, Tihan Ltd and Two Cousins Distillers. The brands manufactured and packaged by these companies with fake Kebs stickers and excise stamps are invariably low-cost products with very high percentage alcoholic content and are sold mainly to low-income earners, mostly youths,” the MP said in Parliament on May 6, shows the Hansard, the official record of debates in the House.

Mr Kajwang alleges that the companies sourced some 200 million empty bottles from the Omani-based Pragati Glass Gulf and Nizwa Industrial Estate, and Tanzania-based Kioo Ltd. Most of the imports, he said, were made just before tax laws were amended to put in place a 25 per cent excise duty on imported glass bottles through the 2020 Business Laws (Amendment) Act.

The bottles, the MP said, were subsequently refilled with various brands of liquor, sealed with fake Kebs stickers and excise stamps and sold to unsuspecting customers, denying the government unspecified revenues.

Concerns over the large consignment of bottles with questionable use in the alcohol business is part of the reason the punitive tax on imported bottles was passed, despite protests from brewers and beverage dealers, who said local manufacturers cannot meet the demand.

Whereas bottle tops generally fall under the excise tax regimes, making them easy to account for during tax assessment, bottles have remained outside the excise tax radar. This has made it possible for fraudulent manufacturers to evade paying tax on alcohol once they have the fake stamps and bottles.

The House committee will look into the tax compliance history of the cited companies and seek to join the dots between the many bottles imported and bottle tops.

KRA officials will be required to outline the steps the agency has taken to stem tax evasion in the alcohol sector as well as present plans for full recovery of any lost revenue to deter the listed firms and others from engaging in such schemes.

Kebs officials are expected to explain the actions taken to ensure that the counterfeit goods are not sold to unsuspecting citizens.

By Vanity Fair

Félicien Kabuga was one of the world’s most wanted fugitives, believed by authorities to have been responsible for underwriting the 1994 Rwandan genocide and providing the hundreds of thousands of machetes that ethnic Hutu marauders used to slaughter at least 800,000 citizens. But until his dramatic capture on May 16, in a dawn raid, Kabuga had been living in hiding for 26 years—in Kenya, Germany, and, recently, in France. Here, for the first time, Serge Brammertz, the man behind the manhunt, describes how it worked and why it succeeded.

If Brammertz did not already exist, Hollywood might have imagined him. For years, the Belgian—who had helped track down Bosnian Serb war criminals Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladićas well as investigate the Hezbollah operatives allegedly responsible for assassinating Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri—had been known in human rights circles as something of an Indiana Jones of international justice. With his salt-and-pepper hair and tailored suits, the 58-year-old prosecutor had a knack for making a lasting impression. And Saturday, May 16, 2020, was no exception.

At 6:30 a.m., as Brammertz manned the phone at his home in The Hague, a phalanx of armed gendarmes flew through the door of a third-floor apartment in a Paris suburb and arrested Kabuga, 84, who will soon face Brammertz in court, most likely in Tanzania.

Hunting génocidaires (the perpetrators of genocide) had largely become an analog business in a digital world. Investigators waited for tips from informants. Then they set off to do the shoe-leather work of canvassing suspected hideouts and interviewing potential accomplices. Brammertz helped change all that in 2016, when the U.N. Security Council named him chief prosecutor of an important body with a forgettable name: the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. He applied the tools of the counterterrorism trade—including cell phone geolocation, “pattern of life” intelligence, and sophisticated, big-data-crunching analytical tools—to hunting war criminals. Brammertz’s mandate was to finish the work of both the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. It fell to him to round up and prosecute fugitives from two of the most bloody and shameful episodes of the past half-century. And few targets loomed larger than Kabuga, who had a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head.

Colonel Èric Emeraux took part in the raid. “After 26 years as a fugitive,” he said, “when you find 20 members of the gendarmerie, plus prosecutors, in your flat on a Saturday morning, you understand it is the end of the game.” Emeraux, as the head of France’s Office for Combatting Crimes Against Humanity, Genocides and War Crimes, worked closely with Brammertz. (Emeraux moonlights as the electronic dance music composer Matthias Ka.) The French colonel explained that despite two months of intensive investigation, his team wanted proof positive that they had the right man. So, the minute Kabuga was nabbed, a police technician swabbed the inside of the old man’s cheek and raced the genetic material to a forensic lab, where the DNA was compared against a 2007 sample from Germany—Kabuga’s last-known location. Two hours later they had a match and Brammertz had his man. (Kabuga’s lawyer has said that his client should be presumed innocent, and that he wants to be tried in France, not before the U.N. tribunal based in Tanzania. The next hearing is on May 27th.)

Vanity Fair: Kabuga was formally indicted in 1997, but has been a wanted man since the Rwandan genocide ended in July 1994. Do you think he was surprised to be caught after all this time?

Serge Brammertz: If you have been living quietly in the middle of Paris, I imagine you are probably surprised when after so many years you’re finally arrested. This investigation is still ongoing, but I am personally convinced that he has been in that apartment for many years. And, you know, he was rarely seen by neighbors. He very rarely went out for walks. So, he was living the quiet life of a retiree.

It is hard to imagine a man whose face has been on most wanted posters for decades—with a bounty on his head—living in Paris, or any metropolis.

Well, you know, when Radovan Karadžić went into hiding, he changed his identity. He became Dr. Dabić. He lost, I think, 20 kilos. He changed his physical appearance, growing a long white beard. He changed his accent and was living in the open and working as a healer. And he even went on TV shows using his new identity without anyone knowing that he was the most wanted war criminal from the former Yugoslavia. So, each fugitive has a different story.

When you became chief prosecutor in 2016, you changed how the fugitive-tracking team operated. Tell me about that—and how you homed in on Kabuga.

For a long time, the tracking team’s focus was on working with informants, different human sources who [simultaneously] would report that Kabuga was in Gabon, Madagascar, or Burundi, which obviously couldn’t be the case. So, we tried to change this reactive way of investigating to become proactive, focusing on analysis and collection. We started assembling and analyzing telephone data, financial and immigration records, travel plans, and so on. As we became more data driven, it allowed us to concentrate our investigation on Western Europe.

What was your starting point?

The last place we were one hundred percent sure Kabuga had been was in Germany back in 2007. He was there under a different identity and had surgery. His son-in-law [Augustin Ngirabatware] was arrested in September that year. [He was subsequently convicted and sentenced to 30 years for genocide and crimes against humanity.] Kabuga was with him in Germany, but this was not discovered until later.

Last spring, we were convinced that he never left Europe. Three months ago, based on analysis of travel movements, we narrowed it down to the U.K., Belgium, and France. And after looking at the most recent data we had collected, we concluded that it was highly likely that the specific area in France we had identified [Asnierès-sur-Seine] was the hiding place.

What kind of tools did you use to pin him down?

Cell-tower analysis, phone number analysis, and other technical tools. We got very, very close—down to a number of streets in this particular area. And then the French—who had been providing information as part of our task force—put this fantastic operation together by locating the apartment and, once the apartment had been located, setting up a very successful operation.

At a time when nationalism is ascendant, Kabuga’s capture appeared to require considerable international coordination and cooperation.

Definitely. We are a tribunal. We cannot do wiretaps, surveillance, and financial investigations. We relied on our partners at Interpol, Europol, and the police services in the U.K., France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. They collected information that we requested at the national level, which we then put into our analytics system. That allowed us to narrow our focus.

Did the pandemic make this operation more challenging?

Yes and no. It is difficult to set up surveillance on an empty street in the middle of a lockdown. People are looking and it looks quite suspicious. So, one definitely has to be much more careful in the use of surveillance techniques. On the other hand, we took advantage of the lockdown. It paused the movements of persons of interest—his support network. We could determine who was likely with him in this place, which only confirmed our working hypothesis.

Actually, we were anxious for rapid intervention—an arrest—to take place before the lockdown was over, and he or the people around him started to move.

[Col. Emeraux recounted that his men had actually mounted a camera in a vehicle parked on Kabuga’s street, which they monitored remotely using iPhones. “We could see the street without being in the street,” he said, adding that the French had initially planned on arresting Kabuga on Tuesday, May 19. But, it seems, cabin fever was setting in among his circle of protectors. “We were geolocating the family’s phones and we saw them moving. So, in coordination with Brammertz, we moved up the operation to Saturday, fearful he might leave.”]

It sounds like you had a stroke of luck in the unluckiest of times.

I’ve seen it with other fugitives we have arrested. There are years of investigation and then there’s this one phone call to this one person where you get this one number that makes the entire case. Luck is important.

Is it fair to say that you adopted tactics, techniques, and procedures from the counterterrorism world—like “pattern of life” analysis—and applied them to the hunt for suspected war criminals?

Yes. Our methodology, technology, and the way of investigating was very, very similar. We know that nowadays, everyone knows what kind of technologies can be used and that [those involved] are extremely careful about what they say on the phone or do online. That’s why you really need to use different analytical methods.

As the U.S. did in the hunt for al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden and other high-value targets, you didn’t necessarily go after Kabuga, you went after those around him.

Exactly. In the early days, the tracking team would follow leads provided by a number of so-called informants. But what we had learned with Mladić, definitely, and it’s absolutely the case with Kabuga, is that you have to go for the fugitive’s support network.

We identified close to 20 persons of interest, which we reduced to five or six by the end. And by zooming in on what they were doing, where they were going, how they were communicating, well, it led us to conclude that he was almost certainly in that specific area. We could also see that persons of interest were rarely traveling to Africa, were mainly moving in Western Europe, and the majority of them were living and had residence in France, Belgium, and the U.K.

Twenty-six years is a very long to remain at large. What have you learned about his tradecraft?

Kabuga had more than 20 different identities and three different passports. When he was arrested, he was using another identity. So we believe there were four passports [in all] from different African countries. And the problem is that these passports were not fake or stolen. They appear to have been delivered by competent authorities with the correct stamps on them. That’s probably the result of corruption or other forms of interference.

It sounds like he had friends in high places.

What we have learned with Karadžić, Mladić, and now Kabuga is that in the early years after they’re indicted or are on the run, they still have a lot of supporters because they were standing for some political idea. That was certainly true of Mladić and the military. And it is obvious that in the first few years, Kabuga had strong support from his political allies, many of them refugees in other countries. But over time these fugitives cannot rely on a broader network. And their network becomes much, much smaller. In the end, the only thing they can rely on is their family.

Before his arrest, did you consider Kabuga the world’s most wanted war criminal?

If you ask any victim or survivor of the genocide in Rwanda, I think everyone would mention Kabuga as being the most wanted person—the man they most want to see in court because of the role he played.

For an international prosecutor, it is very important to stay in close contact with survivors and victims. For the rest of us, this was something that happened 26 years ago. But for those survivors and victims, their lives stopped 26 years ago. Those massacres of their lost ones are still today at the center of their life. I would say the same of the mothers of Srebrenica who I met so many times. You cannot bring back their loved ones. You cannot change their difficult situations. But you can provide some form of relief by bringing to justice those who are responsible for their suffering.

Pressure is piling and a crisis mounting following accountability queries raised on Covid-19 donations sent to Kenya. Billionaire Jack Ma is one of the leading philanthropists in the coronavirus pandemic. Jack has particularly targeted under privileged countries in his medics aid drive. US too was amongst the first beneficiaries of Jack Ma’s foundation aid.

The foundation has sent donations to Africa in three phases with the last of 500,000 kits now being distributed.

Africa can be one step ahead of the coronavirus. To each of the 54 African countries, we will donate 20,000 test kits, 100,000 masks and 1,000 medical use protective suits and face shields. Thank you @PMEthiopia @AbiyAhmedAli for your support. pic.twitter.com/6oKptVCjNx

— Jack Ma (@JackMa) March 16, 2020

Our second donation to 54 countries in Africa is on the way. That includes 500 ventilators, 200K suits & face shields, 2K thermometers, 1M swabs & extraction kits and 500K gloves. Thank you @AbiyAhmedAli @flyethiopian @AfricaCDC @WFP for your partnership. Stay safe Africa!

— Jack Ma (@JackMa) April 6, 2020

Our 3rd donation to Africa will immediately be made to @_africanunion and @AfricaCDC. This includes 4.6m masks, 500k swabs & test kits, 300 ventilators, 200k clothing sets, 200k face shields, 2k thermal guns, 100 body temp. scanners and 500k pairs of gloves. #OneWorldOneFight

— Jack Ma (@JackMa) April 20, 2020

Questions are now arising as to where the donations to Kenya ended up in. According to news sources, they were received and handled by KEMSA instead of MOH and here’s where the scandal brews.

Questions have been raised on Kenya’s capacity to mass test for Covid19 with logistics pointing at an impossibility. KEMRI is said to have the capacity to conduct upto 10,000 tests per day but is greatly underfunded. Kenya is currently conducting an average of 1,000 tests daily and this is cumulative from all the laboratories in the country cleared by the ministry of health to test for the Covid19.

Big question is where’s the money set for the fight, where are the kits. According to a diplomatic sources talking to Kenya Insights, the Chinese embassy is concerned about fraud accusations that has marred the distribution of the medical aid donated by billionaire Jack Ma.

In the last two donations to Africa, Kenya received 50,000 kits, this cant be reflected in all the tests done so far. When the government gave private hospitals the green light to conduct tests, eyebrows were raised with many cautious Kenyans raising eyebrows on the possibilities of donated kits being hawked to the private hospitals.

In the past weeks, social media and Kenyan blogs have been awash with allegations that Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KNCCI) Chairman Richard Ngatia is involved in selling Jack Ma’s kits in cohorts with MOH officials.

“Ngatia had been ready for the coronavirus outbreak since January, by using his access to high-level international intelligence that is available to the Kenyan Presidency, he, therefore, imported a lot of the testing kits and PPEs that would be critical, before the lockdown of airspace around the World.

Currently, Kenya has 10s of thousands of testing kits in the country, with two-thirds having been donated by Chinese Jack Ma and others, but these donations were taken over by Ngatia, to be resupplied to private hospitals.” Kenyan Digest wrote.

The report continues, “

Those people rounded through contact tracing or arbitrary arrests by the Government are quarantined at schools at a cost of Ksh.. 2,000 per person per day.

However, Ngatia through KEMSA has in excess of 5,000 critical care beds which they are releasing to counties that are willing to pay cash for them.

We recently saw Mombasa County Government procure such beds through a Private-public partnership.

Only available to those willing to pay the high cost

On the frontlines, doctors and other critical staff have not received any personal protectives equipment (PPEs) from KEMSA despite constant claims that this equipment is readily available and clear evidence that they have been donated to the Government through KEMSA.

So we continue to wonder, why hasn’t the Ministry of Health ensured that these beds and PPEs arrive at all county hospitals in Kenya in anticipation of the spike in infections and hospitalizations?”

“The main national referral hospital in Kenya has only 22 ICU beds, while Richard Ngatia is hawking 5,000 emergency beds through KEMSA during this peak period of COVID-19, taking advantage of the crisis to charge premium prices for them.”

Currently, about 14 laboratories and private hospitals have been approved by the ministry to conduct the tests for Covid19 with most charging an average of Sh10,000. With a high competition for the coronavirus equipment, scrupulous businessmen and corrupt government officials are making millions out of the pandemic with irregular supply tenders .

Unanswered question in the middle of the circus is the safety of some of the kits coming to Kenya. With most of the supply tenders kept a secret, little is known as to who’s really supplying the kits to Kenya.

We’re told that Jack Ma was set to send another batch of the kits to Kenya this month May but the fraud allegations has put a pause. “He’s demanding answers. Ngatia is a big problem there, Uhuru need to check his friend before it’s too late.” A source talking to Kenya Insights said. Jack is demanding a breakdown of how the donations have been utilized before more aid is sent. He’s determined to see the donations served the purpose of helping the vulnerable and not benefiting the few greedy.

We’re also told how hard things have become for other hospitals to secure purchases from KEMSA as the demand for Covid19 equipment skyrockets.

World Bank is said to have contracted auditors to check on the books as more billions land in Kenya’s Coronavirus fund. It will be worthy to check how this standoff ends as it also risks scaring away other potential donors looking into helping Kenyans in the pandemic.

Afya House cartels seem to be still much alive despite CS Mutahi claiming to have swept the house.

(If you have any worthy tip on the Covid-19 cartels, write to me and information will be treated with confidentiality [email protected] )

Real estate firm Tatu City and Kofinaf have lost an application to have a tax evasion case halted until a suit filed before Supreme Court on whether anti-graft agency officials can investigate accounts without notifying suspects is settled.

While dismissing the case by the two firms against Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), Anti-Corruption Court Judge Mumbi Ngugi found that the highest court in the land had ruled in a case filed by senior lawyer Tom Ojienda that investigators can seek information from banks and other institutions without informing the suspects. Tatu City and Kofinaf wanted the court to halt the case until such a time the Supreme Court will rule on the Prof Ojienda case.

According to the firms, a decision by the highest court in the land was likely to have a bearing on their case. “On the contrary, in my view, what the Supreme Court did was allow the first respondent (EACC) specifically and investigative agencies such as the police and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations in general to apply before Magistrates’ Courts for warrants under sections 118 and 120 of the CPC and section 180 of the Evidence Act, as they used to do prior to the Court of Appeal decision in the Prof Tom Ojienda decision,” ruled Justice Ngugi.

At the heart of the case touching on the multi-billion real estate in Kiambu are claims of tax evasion and money laundering. The judge said that Tatu and Kofinaff had not convinced her there was a reason to halt the case. She ordered the case to proceed to full hearing.

“Its (Supreme Court) decision did not have the effect of stopping the first respondent (EACC) from carrying on its investigations where there was reason to believe that there was corruption or economic crime committed. In the premises, I find no basis for staying the present proceedings,” she ruled.

The study titled “Elite Capture of Foreign Aid: Evidence from Offshore Bank Accounts,” offers details of how the Kenyan ruling political elite in the Moi-Kibaki regime enriched themselves either from the foreign aid or kickbacks from State agencies that received donor funding.

The study was conducted by Bob Rijkers of the World Bank, Jorgen Juel Andersen of BI Norwegian Business School, and Niels Johannesen of the University of Copenhagen and covered the period between 1990 and 2010.

Elite
Kenya’s political elite in the Moi/Kibaki era are accused of agglomerating more than Sh327.89 billion in offshore bank accounts over a two decade period when the country received billions in donor aid, a World Bank-backed research has claimed. 

Jordan topped the ranking among the targeted countries with more than Sh350 billion stashed in offshore bank accounts followed by Kenya followed by Ivory Coast third at Sh128 billion, while the Democratic Republic of Congo fourth with Sh110 billions of stolen aid money. The research compared data on aid disbursements from the World Bank with foreign deposits from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), focusing on 22 aid-dependent countries which obviously Kenya included.

Being that Switzerland, Luxembourg, Cayman Islands and Singapore legal framework emphasises secrecy and asset protection, transaction deposits were on the rise to these offshore accounts as others were channeled to Germany, France and Sweden, according to the report.

In Kenya, Sh136.2 billion was in bank havens that are secretive and have less regulation, providing a perfect cover to conceal the money trail. The other Sh190.35 billion was in regulated bank accounts. This is according to the report. 

With World bank being the biggest aid provider to Kenya, in a suspicious move, the head of world bank in the country held a press briefing on Wednesday to refute claims and methodology of this report. A move which could drag them into the crime scene.

The report awakens the earlier on forensic study by Kroll Associates, which had detailed the plunder of taxpayers’ cash during the Kanu administration. President Mwai Kibaki hired Kroll Associates in 2003 to track and repatriate funds hidden abroad by business people and top public officials in the Daniel arap Moi era. The overseas assets included multi-million pound properties in London, New York, and South Africa, as well as a 10,000 hectare ranch in Australia according the Kroll Associates forensic report.

A copy of the leaked audit listed Australia, Belgium, Brunei, Canada, Finland, Germany, Grand Cayman, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jersey, Liechtenstein, Liberia, Luxembourg, Malawi, Namibia, the Netherlands, Puerto Rico, Russia, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Switzerland, the UAE, Uganda, the United Kingdom, the United States and Zaire as some of the countries the stolen wealth was stashed by Kenyans.

In 2018 Kenyan government signed deal with United Kingdom and Switzerland and reached out to 7 other foreign nations secretly through Attorney General Kihara, Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission(EACC) with DPP in a bid to recover laundered Kenyan assets.

In 2019 last year in a report by the Treasury, wealthy Kenyans wired back an estimated Sh1 trillion from offshore accounts in the past three years from 2016-2019, taking advantage of a tax amnesty offered by the Treasury.

The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) said the amount was repatriated by some 16,000 applicants who took advantage of the amnesty window during which they were not required to declare the source of their wealth or even account for previous years’ tax arrears. “We have received over 16,000 applicants with the amount repatriated so far at Sh1,014,058,103,551. The incentive was meant to encourage Kenyans to repatriate their wealth back to the country for purposes of development,” said KRA in a statement. 

The amount wired back was more than one third of Kenya’s annual Budget.

   European Union

Past week the European Commission added Mauritius which has become a cinderella destination for elites to hide their ill gotten wealth escaping from the taxman KRA, Panama and 9 other countries to its list of countries that pose a financial risk to the bloc because they are linked to money laundering and terrorism financing.

European Union says Countries on the list pose significant threats to the financial system of the European Union. In a statement on its website, the European Commission said the revised list will be submitted to the European Parliament for approval within one month and the country status of the new listing will take effect on October 1.

Former Cabinet  Minister Amos Kimunya and two others are free after six years of prosecution.

Nairobi Anti-Corruption Court acquitted them in a case in which they had been charged with fraudulently disposing of public property worth Sh60 million.

Magistrate Felix Kombo ruled that the prosecution had failed to prove its case against them beyond a reasonable doubt.

“No prima facie case had been established against the accused persons and acquit all the persons charged in court,” he said.

The Kipipiri MP faced six counts of abuse of office.

Kimunya was charged alongside Lilian Njenga, a director of Land Adjudication and Settlement, and Jughae Wainaina, chairman of Midlands Limited, a company associated with the former Kipipiri MP who once served as Finance minister.

The prosecution alleged that in June 2005, Kimunya and Njenga allocated Midlands 25 acres of public land.

Kimunya had been accused of not protecting public property and failing to disclose he was a director of Midland.

Former World Bank chief economist and colleagues from two European universities have published a long-awaited research in which they show that global aid to poorest countries like Kenya, is instead being retransferred to offshore havens.

The research was done by Penny Goldberg, a World Bank chief economist, who resigned two weeks ago from her job when the leaks about the research emerged. The other colleagues are — Jørgen Juel Andersen of BI Norwegian Business School and Niels Johannesen of the University of Copenhagen and CEBI. The final contributor to the research was the World Bank’s Bob Rijkers.

The research titled “Elite Capture of Foreign Aid: Evidence from Offshore Bank Accounts”, was done for the World Bank, but then the findings proved too embarrassing for publication. The researchers were reportedly not allowed to share its contents. Penny Goldberg decided to leave her job, and the whole document is now published on her website.

Kenya Insights reviewed the 46-page document and it gives grim reading. Reviewing data of 22 countries including Kenya, the team shows that aid granted by the World Bank is falling into the wrong hands.

“After aid to a country increased, money departs for offshore havens,” reads the research in part.

The other countries in the research are Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Zambia, Afghanistan, Armenia, Burkina Faso, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Kyrgyz-Republic, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Sao Tome and Principe, and Sierra Leone.

The research document is rather complicated. The research used quarterly information on aid disbursements from the World Bank, to these 22 most aid-dependent countries, in combination with Bank for International Settlements banking statistics, which cover the flows between the country receiving the aid and havens such as Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands and Singapore, where secrecy and asset protection are paramount.

For comparison, the research also looks at flows between the recipient country and Germany, France and Sweden — places not as vaunted for their banking secrecy. Scenarios that you would expect to lead to higher inflows and outflows, such as wars or financial crises, are excluded.

For the case of each country, the research shows how much much money moved out from the state coffers, immediately it arrived from the World Bank.

For Kenya’s case, the annual World Bank disbursement is 1.1% of GDP.

The researchers shows that in their investigation, $1,277m exited Kenya and was deposited in offshore havens. During the same period, $1,784m left Kenya for non-offshore havens. This means $3.1b left Kenya in a very short period of time.

For offshore deposits of money from Kenya, the researchers found a quarterly increase of 2.0% in deposits for offshore havens, but the deposits in non-offshore havens reduced by 0.4%.

For Uganda, the researchers discovered the opposite from Rwanda. They found $73m was deposited in offshore havens, while $188m left Uganda for non-offshore regions.

In Tanzania, the money leaving the country’s coffers to be hidden away, is exorbitant. During the period that the researchers investigated, $145m left Tanzania for offshore accounts. However, a whooping $437m was deposited in non-offshore havens.

For the smallest economy in the East African Community (EAC) region, Burundi, $103m was ferried out of the country to offshore accounts. At the same time, just $19m was swindled off to non-offshore regions.

What is clear is that Kenyan elites prefer hiding most of their money in those deeply secret havens where no one will ask questions. While, Ugandans and Tanzanians are fine with stealing the World Bank cash and sending to places that dont tolerate spoils of theft from poor countries.

There was a problem that the researchers admit in the paper. For instance, it was impossible for them to tell who exacy in terms of names, is moving the funds out of the country, with the statistics used, only counting the total flows per quarter between countries.

While there have been different leaks over the years showing how money was flowing from poor countries to Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands and Singapore, it is the first time Rwanda has been highlighted. It is particularly shocking as the data comes from inside the World Bank, which has repeatedly given a clean bill of health for different aspects of Rwanda

On section 13, appendix A of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) contract titled “Supply and installation of the facilities. Locomotives and stocks for the Mombasa – Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway Project”, the exorbitant cost of the white elephant project are laid bare. The appendix A is titled Non-Binding Bill of Quantities.

It is 44 pages of pure theft. Nonetheless, the rip-off in these pages were covered in the first article and as such, I’d like to move to another section and delve into the parts about the grass that costed Sh1 billion to show what the media left out.

I will come back to Section 1, Appendix A later on, albeit briefly.

As Kenyans are glued on combating Covid-19 pandemic which has killed exactly 50 Kenyans as per the time this article was published, many people are forgetting that neighboring countries constructed their equivalent of SGR at a lesser cost.

The over Sh400 billion that Kenya has borrowed and used in all the routes of the SGR (Mombasa – Nairobi – Naivasha etc) was enough to construct a dual lane electric train system.

Many people have forgotten that as the debate raged about a diesel vs electric trains, the ever PR-ready and greedy government went ahead and signed a $240 million (Sh24.4 billion) loan to electrify the SGR.

The move was a costly afterthought meant to rival Tanzania and Ethiopia’s SGR.

However, the blunder is that the money was channeled through an incompetent parastatal by the name Kenya Electricity Transmission Company Limited (Ketraco). 

Fernandes Barasa-led parastatal had signed the contract with a Chinese-government owned multinational China Electric Power Equipment and Technology Company Limited (CET) two years ago and the works was supposed to begin.

What happened?

Mr Barasa wrote an opinion piece on a local daily saying that the project was viable but then Managing Director of Kenya Railways Corporation (KRC) Mr Atanas Maina had contradicted him stating that ‘the govt does not have the resources to transform the railway from diesel to electric’.

Ketraco on its part had stated that they will use the money to build 14 substations between the cities of Mombasa and Nairobi on a transmission line with a transfer capacity of “1,500 megawatts (MW) which is 200MW shy of the current national demand of 1,700MW”. 

In all these, no one could explain how Ethiopia had built its 750 Kilometre-long SGR line at a cost of $3.4 billion (Sh346 billion), whereas Kenya’s 472-kilometre-long line had gobbled Sh447 billion.

‘Chop my money’

Though most people have forgotten that SGR is a white elephant whose construction coupled with other blunders and mismanagement by the Jubilee regime now threatens to cost us important installations such as the port of Mombasa, kenyainsights.com would like to keep the conversation alive.

Well, on Section 7, also titled Non-Binding Bill of Quantities, the first page shows the description of the entire page and their costing to be preliminary and supervisory/support services, site clearance and topsoil stripping, earthworks, protection work for railway and structure, culverts and drainage works, passage of traffic, temporary work and structure, bridge works, track laying work, and finally building of railway station, management office and subsidiary house.

The total cost of these is given as over Sh201 billion.

Generally, most of the Chinese employed to construct the SGR lived like kings, for example on provision of furnished houses for the employers (China Road and Bridge Corporation – CRBC) and senior staff, the taxpayer coughed up a whopping sh30 million. 

KenyaInsights.com will now share a picture of the rest of the page for you to do your own calculations.

In the second page on the continuation of preliminary and general supervisory/support services, Sh30 million has been set aside for the senior engineer to be ‘spent on’ an unspecified item ‘in whole or part.

It is in this section that we get to see that indeed the engineer’s office was given Sh3.6 million for ‘mobile and telephone charges’. To make matters worse, a temporary accommodation for the engineer was allocated Sh7.6 million.

How much is a simple event like a launch of SGR should cost? Answer, in this section, the contract shows that the budget was Sh20 million.

In the Earthworks section, the famous cost of the billon shilling grass emerges; the exact amount is actually Sh1,090,704,240.

The above section coupled with Section 13: Appendix A reveals the shocking theft that happened while constructing SGR. The claims of inflated costs are no longer claims as the ealier article and this one has shown.

It is even imperative to remember that the African Union High Representative for Infrastructure Hon. Raila Odinga recently revealed in a TV interview that the coalition government under former President Mwai Kibaki and him had negotiated a lower cost that was revised upwards when UhuRuto came into power.

“Before we left government with Mwai Kibaki, we awarded SGR tender to a company at USD2.5billion. But when jubilee came in in 2013, they canceled the tender and awarded it back to the same company but at USD4.5billion. Obvious inflation of figures”-Raila Odinga, said in an interview in January 2020.

Environmental impact assessment and other blunders

The Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) for the SGR project was carried it by a Kenyan firm Africa Waste and Environment Management Centre (AWEMAC); the worst part in the report is that   only 217 people were interviewed as Key Informant for the public participation.

The study was rushed and appears to be a formality on the part government of Kenya and their Chinese cronies. The project that had its cost revised upwards would go on and nothing could stop it.

China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC), the contractor, in a bid to hide crucial information from the public made the Kenyan government sign confidentiality clauses in the controversial contract making it “sensitive and private”.

By the end of this year, Kenya is expected to have repaid at least Sh50 billion of the exorbitant Chinese loan.

The loan, whose interest is 3.6 percentage points above the six month average of London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (Libor) which serves as an international benchmark, is to be repaid in 15 years with a grace period of five years.

“The railway has been sold as a commercially viable project, that is, it would pay for itself…I maintained that the railway could not pay, and that the debt would be paid from the public purse. This has now come to pass”. David Ndii repeated this statement that he made in 2014 in 2018 in a hard-hitting article titled, “SGR by the numbers: Some Unpleasant Arithmetic”-  David Ndii, Managing Director for Africa Economics

The current one year Libor rate as of December 20, 2019 is two percent, a pointer that the loan comes with an interest rate of 5.6 percent.

This is expensive compared to other concessional loans, especially from the World Bank. Kenya recently agreed a Sh75 billion loan with the World Bank whose interest and other charges stand at two percent annually—matching the Libor rate.

Treasury data tabled in the National Assembly show that loan payments to Exim Bank of China will increase to Sh84.3 billion for the 2020/2021 and Sh111.4 billion in the 2021-22 financial years.

SGR accounts for the largest share of Exim Bank of China loans to Kenya including the Sh150 billion used to build the Nairobi-Naivasha line which has failed to attract business.

In perspective

The government has been forcing truckers out of jobs in order to make arm-twist businessmen to use the SGR. The issues surrounding the Inland Container Depot (ICD) in Nairobi has escalated and recently the Ministry of Transport announced that all cargo going to Western Kenya and the region must be offloaded at the newly built Naivasha ICD.

However, it seems highly unlikely that SGR which runs at a cost of over Sh1 billion per month is going to break even, despite these maneuvers. 

Even as SGR made losses this year, its costs of operations continue to rise.

SGR which is run by China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) raked in sh13.5 billion against Sh18 billion per year.

CCCC has also been accused of importing foreigners who are paid exorbitantly than Kenyans on an already strained train service.

At this point in time, over 50,000 truck drivers and turnboys, according to the ESIA report, are staring at job losses. Jubilee govt, even going by the way they’ve behaved up to now, seems to have had no agenda for the people.

Mombasa is said to be turning into a ghost town, thanks to the job losses.

Finally, even as Kenyans continue to grapple with COVID-19, job losses, waning incomes, and corruption, questions about the money borrowed to finance electrification of SGR linger because, a year after the loan signing, Ketraco was caught up in a scandal that Sh14.2 billion is said to have been lost through fraudulent payments to landowners.

French intelligence agents spied on the children of Rwanda’s most-wanted genocide fugitive to track him down to an apartment in a Paris suburb and end a 26-year-long manhunt, the head of the police unit who arrested Felicien Kabuga said.

The inquiry gathered pace in March after an intelligence sharing meeting between investigators from France, Britain, and Belgium, home to some of Kabuga’s children, as well as Europe’s Europol law enforcement agency and a team from a U.N. tribunal.

The coronavirus lockdown paralysing most of Europe meant many investigations were put on hold, allowing a focus on Kabuga’s file, said Eric Emeraux, head of the Gendarmerie’s Central Office for Combating Crimes Against Humanity.

The dragnet subsequently closed in on one of the alleged chief financiers of the Rwandan genocide, suspected of bankrolling and arming the militias that slaughtered 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994.

“We realised … that trail from the children protecting their father converged on Asnieres-sur-Seine,” Emeraux told Reuters, referring to a Paris suburb. “We also discovered one of his children was renting an apartment there.”

Wiretaps were installed and the property placed under surveillance. Intelligence indicated there was good reason to believe that someone other than one of his offspring was residing in the apartment.

“We decided to open the door, without being entirely sure of who we would find inside,” Emeraux said. “I didn’t sleep the night before.”

The 84-year-old fugitive had been living in a third-floor flat on the Rue du Reverend Pere Christian Gilbert in Asnieres-sur-Seine, a well-off neighbourhood on the northern fringe of Paris.

Neighbours described a frail, elderly man who said little and before the lockdown would often stroll outside of his apartment. One resident in the same block said Kabuga might have lived there for four or five years.

GBAGBO’S LAWYER

Reuters has not been able to find any public comment made by Kabuga over the years about the charges. French lawyer Emmanuel Altit said he will be part of the defense team. He did not respond to a subsequent request seeking comment from Kabuga.

Altit was a senior lawyer on the team which successfully secured former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo’s acquittal on charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court in January 2019.

On Saturday, a squad of 16 elite officers, dressed in black and dubbed ‘Ninjas’ by Emeraux, forced Kabuga’s front door at 6 a.m.

“Kabuga didn’t put up any resistance,” Emeraux said. He was formally identified in a DNA test, matching against a sample taken when he was hospitalised in Germany in 2007, Emeraux added.

Kabuga’s arrest marked the end of a more than two-decade-long hunt that spanned Africa and Europe. Kabuga had 28 known aliases and was using a passport from an African country, Emeraux said.

Altit said Kabuga would be arraigned before a Paris court on Tuesday.

The court will set out the legal process before passing the case to investigative judges within eight days. The judges will decide whether to hand Kabuga to the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. If Kabuga appeals against their ruling, the matter will go France’s Court of Cassation, which hears whether rulings conform with the law.

Kabuga’s ability to hide to evade an international manhunt for more than 20 years has raised questions over whether he had accomplices outside of his family.

“It is difficult to imagine he could have escaped into French territory without the help of accomplices,” said Patrick Baudoin of the International Federation for Human Rights. The federation has supported survivors in the prosecution of other Rwandan genocide suspects living in France.

High-level corruption, impunity and nepotism are among the obstacles bedeviling Kenya Rural Roads Authority and Kenya Urban Roads Authority applicants for the position of Director General recently advertised by ministry of Infrastructure.

We have established that KeNHA engineers are said to be aggressively eyeing the posts despite their integrity issues being questioned. James Gatitu who is eyeing for the DG position is under the radar of DCI and is being sought for numerous contracts while in charge of fuel levy and awarding. He made sure contracts associated to his cronies and relatives were beneficiaries.

Gatitu is a sympathiser to a political outfit, Tangatanga and hails from Eldoret. He is being investigated for giving false information in his wealth declaration form to the government agencies probing lifestyle. He is said to have accumulated wealth from unscrupulous contractors and suppliers. Engineer Kandie of KeNHA has also applied. Initially Kandie was boasting how he has been contributing towards deputy president 2022 presidential bid.

He has no time for Baringo senator Gideon Moi. Others being sort and their wealth being scrutinised for having declared false wealth to the public service includes a one Engineer Ariga who worked for a decade as a director for urban development. Engineer Kandie is said to have been embroiled in a corruption spectrum while deputising engineer Gatitu.

The shenanigans at KeNHA are far from over as a section of the management are undermining newly appointed board chairman Engineer Ndirangu. They accuse him of being rigid and intimidating senior staff. Sources within interior ministry intimated that KeNHA engineers applying for the Director General posts at Kura and KeRRA will have to be vetted by National Intelligence Service and a report handed to Infrastructure cabinet secretary James Macharia for action.

Another name featuring in the race is that of Engineer Omuomo who is a close confidant to Machakos governor. Before Covid-19 pandemic, he was hanging in the governor’s offices in Nairobi and Machakos The little known Engineer Gichohi has been burning the midnight oil in the ministry to gain sympathy. He is eyeing the Director General seat at KeRRA and is a friend of Wamahiu, a Nyeri businessman. The handshake between Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga will not affect offices of technocrats like the one of Director General, a source at the ministry was overheard whispering. Kura acting DG is Silas Kinoti with Luke Kimeli at KeRRA. The two have applied for the positions.-Citizen Weekly.

The Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) has blacklisted at least eight sanitizers for breaching manufacturing rules and has warned the public against using them.

The eight sanitizers were found to breach the requirements of Kenya Standard specification for Instant Hand Sanitizers and KEBS has instructed the manufacturers to stop production with immediate effect.

“Kebs wishes to inform the public that the following brands of hand sanitizer have been ascertained as not meeting the requirements of KS EAS 789; Kenya Standard specification for Instant Hand Sanitizers,” the agency announced.

Here is a list of manufacturers and their blacklisted products;

Kings Palace -Alphax

Virtuelle Products Limited-Clean Essentials

Orange Pharma -G&L

Bidco Africa -Gentle Care

Ken brands International Company-Lili

Mafleva International-Msiri

Shishi Naturals-Shi shi Natural

Havana East Africa Trading -Spotless Advanced

The Manufacturers have been instructed to stop selling the products and recall any that is in the market until they meet the stipulated requirements and their suspension is lifted.

The members of the public will then been informed when Kebs lifts the suspension of the sanitizers and deems them safe for usage.

“Substandard products found will be seized for destruction at the expense of the owner in addition to any other legal action as provided under the law.”

The suspension comes at a time when the demand for the hand sanitizers has been high as people seek to frequently clean their hands and the things they touch in the wake of Coronavirus that is very contagious.

Since the first case was reported in Kenya on March 12, Kenyans have been buying the sanitizers as they are efficient in the absence of water and soap.

The announcement by Kebs, however, shows how manufacturers have been taking advantage of some situations to exploit people. Earlier, those that hiked prices were also suspended.

(This story was first published by the Premium Times in Nigeria).

Serious disruption to court systems around the world caused by the global Covid-19 crisis is having a major impact on Nigeria’s struggle to claw back billions of dollars it claims was looted from the country via one of the most “corrupt” oil deals in corporate history.

As much as $5.5 billion could be at stake for Nigeria in its efforts to seek justice over the notorious OPL245 deal dating back to 2011, which it claims consists of allegedly stolen funds and damages.

But delays in a key criminal trial in Milan involving Shell, Eni and a host of other officials and corporate executives has led to the postponement of several months, with a verdict now expected early next year.

Shell, Eni and the other co-accused have denied any wrongdoing.

In the UK, where other important asset recovery cases are underway, the pandemic is also creating logistical challenges for court hearings – while Nigeria has locked down its courts and closed its international airports.

Africa’s most populous nation, which has also been hit by plummeting crude oil prices, is desperate for funds that could provide essential medical equipment as the coronavirus threatens to overwhelm health systems across the continent.

It reportedly only has one intensive care bed available for every 570,000 people.

The court delays come as an investigation by Premium Times and its London partner Finance Uncovered into the Nigerian government’s asset recovery programme reveals details of vital decisions that have taken place behind closed doors.

Our investigation:

• shines a light on the opaque process which has seen a potentially lucrative contract for OPL245 asset recovery awarded to a relatively unknown Lagos law firm without a clear tender process;

• reveals that the Lagos firm, Johnson &  Johnson has also done a deal with a US funder, Drumcliffe Partners, to help fund the recovery of the country’s assets;

• and that together they hope to land tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars as their own success fees for recovering the bounty.

There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by Johnson and Johnson and Drumcliffe, but experts have questioned the Buhari government’s approach to recovering assets allegedly plundered under previous administrations.

This includes a perceived lack of transparency and a reluctance to fund the difficult and costly work of asset recovery itself. Our findings have prompted calls for the Nigerian government to review the programme and to make its decisions more transparent.

Matthew Page, a former top Nigeria expert in the US State Department and now an associate fellow with the Africa Programme of UK’s Chatham House research think tank, said: “The government should be issuing monthly reports, or making clear what decisions are being implemented, but they’re not. Given how important asset recovery is to Nigeria’s fiscal bottom line it suggests that the government’s decisions are being based on personal and political calculations, rather than in the public interest.”

OPL245 backstory

OPL245 is not the only asset recovery case underway, but it is the most high-profile one.

It concerns a deal signed for $1.3bn in 2011 which saw Shell and Eni secure the rights to a massive offshore oil block, OPL245.

The two oil giants had been negotiating with Dan Etete, who, while oil minister in 1998, had awarded the rights to Malabu, an obscure shelf company that he secretly owned.

After years of legal wrangling, Shell teamed up with Eni of Italy and, with the help of Goodluck Jonathan’s government, eventually secured the rights.

It triggered a major scandal as Etete walked away with the best part of $1 billion, much of which is alleged to have been redirected in bribes, while a vast sum also funded his own opulent lifestyle with money spent on luxury hotels, armoured Cadillacs and a private jet. A previous Finance Uncovered investigationsuggested that additional funds may have been spent on property in Dubai. Etete has always denied wrongdoing.

Prosecutors in Milan charged Eni, Shell and other named parties three years ago and the  trial was close to completion just before the Covid-19 outbreak in Italy in February.

Nigeria had been admitted to the trial as an “injured party” and a guilty verdict could unblock a damages award worth billions of dollars.

Shell, Eni, Etete and the other co-accused have denied any wrongdoing and are defending themselves in the Milan trial.

Shell has said it “does not believe that there is a basis to convict Shell or any of its former employees”.

Eni maintains it has “full confidence in the legality/appropriateness of its activities in acquiring OPL 245”, which it says was “a completely legal and legitimate transaction conducted directly with the government of Nigeria”.

Jonathan, who has not been indicted, has also denied any wrongdoing.

Asset recovery

Jonathan’s successor, Muhammadu Buhari swept to power on an anti-corruption mandate in 2015. Immediately after being sworn in, his deputy, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo (pictured below and in main image) set up a committee to guide the recovery of Nigerian assets that it believes have been stolen and stashed abroad

Osinbajo, a career lawyer and former attorney general for Lagos State, chaired the committee which promptly sought proposals from hopeful local and international asset recovery firms.

Very little information has reached the public about this committee’s makeup, decision-making and track record. It is thought to have later evolved into the inter-agency Presidential Committee on Asset Recovery (PCAR).

Controversially for the asset recovery firms appointed, the committee is thought to have taken the policy decision some time after 2016 to set a relatively low cap on any success fees paid to the firms it appointed: 5% of funds recovered. This policy is not widely known in Nigeria. Sources have indicated that Osinbajo has had a difficult working relationship with the Ministry of Justice, headed by Attorney General Abubakar Malami, which is responsible for appointing recovery agents and overseeing their work. It is understood there have been major disagreements between the two politicians over policy and implementation, further complicating the asset recovery process.

The Vice President and Attorney General were unavailable for comment.

Explaining how the appointment process works, Solicitor General Dayo Apata told the Premium Times that “engagement of recovery agent[s] is based on [a] proposal written to the Attorney-General on the specific recovery to be pursued. If the recovery has prospect [then the] agents are engaged”.

Nigeria’s OPL245 team

One of the first firms out of the blocks to submit a proposal was the Lagos law firm Johnson & Johnson, whose principal partner is Babatunde Olabode “Bode” Johnson

In 2016, Johnson & Johnson was jointly appointed as the government’s agent for OPL245-related recoveries, together with Verdant, a north London law firm, whose solicitors were licensed to practice in the English courts where the first asset recovery battle was expected to be fought.

Enquiries by Finance Uncovered and Premium Times have suggested that Johnson and Johnson, which does not have a website, is a generalist law firm that does not specialise in asset tracing and recovery.

Babajide Ogundipe, a lawyer who has known both Osinbajo and Johnson since law school, and who considers Johnson a good friend, said that Johnson is “a very bright lawyer” but that in his opinion he “didn’t have any real experience” in asset recovery.

Ogundipe, who has two decades’ experience in this field and is the only Nigerian member of ICC Fraudnet, an elite global asset tracing and recovery network, recounted how his own initial interest in the new government’s asset recovery work soon cooled.

“When I found out what was on offer, it was clear to me they did not understand what is required. If you tell people, ‘We will pay you 5% of whatever you recover, and we don’t give you any money upfront,’ it’s not going to work. I have known this for more than 20 years. You cannot recover assets from people who are well-financed and extremely well resourced if you don’t have money. It costs money,” he said.

Ogundipe later learned that his friend Johnson was self-financing his own firm’s work on OPL245, and said he offered to introduce him to a number of litigation funders he knew.

Litigation funders are investors who take a bet on promising cases by contributing money towards legal costs in return for a portion of any winnings. If the case loses then they lose their money and potentially pay some, or all, of the other side’s legal costs. But if it wins then they expect to get their money back plus a multiple of anything between two- and five-times their original investment. It is a high-risk, high-reward business.

In 2017, Ogundipe’s contacts book paid off when niche American funder Drumcliffe Partners agreed to fund Johnson & Johnson.

Drumcliffe is a Washington DC-based, Delaware-incorporated investment fund headed by private equity specialist James ‘Jim’ Little.

Before entering the private equity business in 2004, Little worked as a private contractor to the US defense and national security industries, according to an online profile.

Drumcliffe’s one-page website simply says it “oversee[s] portfolios of high-value claims involving aspects of commercial fraud, insolvency, asset recovery, and third-party liability”.

But Little bangs the drum for Drumcliffe on the conference circuit, including one in Miami in 2017 at which he was filmed on a panel of litigation funders explaining that one of his fund’s specialist areas is “sovereigns [governments] who have fallen prey to corruption, in their efforts to repatriate assets for their people”.

Drumcliffe is also a “strategic partner” of ICC FraudNet, where Little is said to have told a gathering of network members in Colombia last year that he had raised more $100 million from investors to fund cases.

But in general, Drumcliffe prefers to keep details of its involvement in specific cases under wraps for commercial and legal reasons.

It even hired hard-hitting London media, libel and privacy law firm Carter-Ruck in an attempt to dissuade publication of its name and role in this story.

The only other publicly known case it has backed is a US undersea mineral exploration company’s multi-billion dollar claim against the Mexican government for refusing it the right to exploit an environmentally sensitive seabed.

Drumcliffe works hand-in-hand with Halcyon Law Group, a multijurisdictional asset recovery law firm based in Washington DC represented by Christopher Camponovo, which manages the fund’s asset recovery cases.

Like Little, Camponovo has ties to the US security establishment: he previously worked as a legal advisor to the state department and to the White House National Security Council under President George W. Bush, according to his LinkedIn profile.

All to play for

In December 2017, the asset recovery team had its first major success when a UK judge ordered that funds linked to OPL245, and which had been frozen, be returned to Nigeria. The balance of $73m was repatriated to the Nigerian government the next year

Johnson & Johnson is understood to have later received a 5% success fee from the government, or just over $3.6 million, to be split with Verdant.

And in July 2018 the presiding judge in the OPL245 trial in Milan admitted Nigeria as a civil party to the case, opening the door for it to potentially receive billions of dollars in compensation in the event that a guilty verdict against Shell and Eni leads to a damages award. Shell and Eni have denied any wrongdoing.

Around this time, Johnson & Johnson dispensed with Verdant, and hired Reynolds Porter Chamberlain (RPC), a top London law firm.

RPC is understood to instruct counsel on behalf of the Nigerian government in cases underway in Italy, Switzerland and the UK.

Premium Times and Finance Uncovered are aware of four OPL245-linked asset recovery cases currently underway, seeking amounts which could top $5.5 billion. This figure comprises:

• damages linked to the outcome of the criminal trial in Milan. The Nigerian government is hoping for an award of up to $3.5 billion — a calculation based on its expert witness’s valuation of the oil block’s market value in 2011 — but a judge might also be inclined to award “symbolic damages” of a much lower amount in the event of any guilty verdicts;
• a civil claim against Shell and Eni in London, which intends to defend the claim ($1.1 billion).
  A judge is hearing an application by Shell and Eni this week to have this case dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. The oil companies argue that Nigeria’s claim in London is duplicating proceedings in Milan, Nigeria is opposing the application;
• a civil claim against JP Morgan in London, which intends to defend the claim ($875 million); and
• a claim against funds frozen in the Swiss bank account of a middleman convicted in Italy in connection with OPL245, who is appealing his conviction ($112 million)

The outcome in each case is by no means certain. They are contested at every turn by a phalanx of top legal teams commanding eye-watering sums in defence of their clients — and Nigeria has suffered recent setbacks in both the criminal and civil cases against Shell and Eni.

Any damages award in Italy may be far lower than hoped, and a British judge may be reluctant to double up on any damages award potentially under consideration by an Italian court.

But calculated on a 5% success fee basis, Johnson & Johnson could be in line for a payout amounting to tens, and potentially even hundreds, of millions of dollars.

Drumcliffe would also hope to recoup its upfront investment several times over.

A top panel of funders who addressed the Offshore Alerts conference in London late last year agreed that the industry expects, on average, a 3x rate of return on an investment.

This means that were Drumcliffe to invest $10 million, they would aim to recoup their original investment plus potentially another $30 million on top.

The terms of its funding agreement with Johnson & Johnson are confidential.

It is understood the Nigerian government considered funding further legal expenses for the OPL245 cases itself after the successful recovery of the $73 million from the UK, but opted not to do so for unclear reasons.

In response to questions for this article, Solicitor General Dayo Apata confirmed that “agents are only entitled to a percentage (not more than 5%) of actual recoveries as success fees after remittance of the recovered monies has been confirmed by the Central Bank of Nigeria”

Apata said neither the Ministry of Justice or the Attorney General’s office had “entered into any agreement with any funders,” and was therefore “not in a position to address issues relating to a funding agreement which [it] is not privy to”.

He referred further questions to Johnson & Johnson.

Johnson & Johnson, Drumcliffe, Halcyon and RPC all declined to comment for this article.

However, it is understood that Drumcliffe has no direct contractual relationship with the Nigerian government.

Verdant has since closed down.

Rosetta Offonry, a former Verdant partner, and Anthony Igbiniyesu, a Solicitor Advocate with Verdant at the time, said: “For the record, Verdant was never funded by Drumcliffe. We are proud of our conduct in the recovery on behalf of the Nigerian government and remittance to them of the sum of $73.2 million which remains as far as we are aware the only funds from OPL245 recovery to have been successfully secured by Nigeria to date.”

Calls for transparency

Reviewing Nigeria’s asset recovery effort as a whole, Matthew Page of Chatham House said: “I don’t fault the Nigerian government for using private firms to undertake asset recovery because it has very few lawyers on its payroll. But with some of these recovery cases, the firms taking them on are not household names in Nigeria, which begs the question: why give this lucrative and important work to them?”

A consortium of anti-corruption groups who have spent years investigating OPL245 said this shows why there needs to be full transparency.

The group, comprising Corner House and Global Witness in the UK, HEDA Resource Centre in Nigeria and Re:Common in Italy, called for all agreements that have been entered into by recovery agents acting for the government to be made public, including any agreements with third-party funders. “This is so that the Nigerian public and the international community can have confidence that recovery claims are being handled with competence, integrity and in the interests of Nigerians rather than law firms and their backers.”

“It is worrying that so little public information is available on the status of asset recovery cases,” they added. “The public needs to know what recoveries have been made, how much they cost and how much money has actually been returned to Nigeria.”

Three days before the publication of this article in the Premium Times on Monday, a London public relations firm, Montfort Communications, contacted a Finance Uncovered reporter to request a delay.

The firm, which in the course of our joint investigation had been fielding questions related to Drumcliffe, Johnson & Johnson, and RPC, asked if we could delay publication until after an important court hearing linked to OPL245, which started in the UK today.

Finance Uncovered and Premium Times declined the request.

When we asked Montfort who had made that request, the PR firm did not respond.

By Financial Uncovered.