When George Musembi Muia retired from the Kenya Revenue Authority in 2022, he had spent decades in government service and imagined the next chapter of his life would be a comfortable one. Perhaps a board chairmanship at one of the country’s better-paying parastatals. A prestigious exit. The kind of post that rewards a man for years of institutional loyalty. What he got instead was the most expensive lesson of his life, and a High Court case he cannot escape.
Musembi, a former senior manager at KRA, is now before the Nairobi High Court fighting to recover Sh63 million he claims was swindled from him by a man he describes as a consummate fraud.
The man in question is one Cosmas Mutati Nzoka, whom Musembi says presented himself as a well-oiled insider with direct access to the innermost rings of the Kenya Kwanza administration.
Names like that of Farouk Kibet, President William Ruto’s powerful personal assistant, Head of Public Service Felix Koskei, then-Transport Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen and the feared Kapsaret MP Oscar Sudi were allegedly dropped into conversation with the casual ease of someone who actually knew them.
Musembi did not know any of those men personally. He had never moved in those circles. But he wanted to, badly enough that he would wire millions in cash, hand over dollar-stuffed brown envelopes inside a grey Mercedes-Benz at Muthaiga Square, and keep paying even as the promised appointment failed to materialise. His account before the court reads, as one observer put it, less like a civil case and more like the plot of a financial thriller.
The Introduction
The saga began, according to court documents, in late 2023, seeded by a seemingly ordinary connection. While still working at KRA before his retirement, Musembi had come to know a man called David Muema, a clearing agent who operated at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. It was Muema who served as the critical bridge, the man who introduced the retired revenue official to Mutati and gave the introduction the kind of credibility only a trusted mutual contact can provide.
Muema, Musembi told the court, vouched for Mutati as a well-connected businessman who moved freely through the corridors of government big offices. More specifically, Muema allegedly told him that Mutati could deliver a board chairmanship position at one of the parastatals falling under the then Ministry of Transport and Roads. The position Musembi had his sights set on was the chairmanship of the Kenya Urban Roads Authority, KURA, a body responsible for the development, maintenance and management of urban road networks across the country. The seat, according to Musembi, was vacant at the time.
The Meeting at a Thika Road Hotel
The first meeting between Musembi and Mutati was arranged for December 2023, at a hotel on Thika Road at 7pm. It was the kind of hour and venue where deals are discussed without too many witnesses. By Musembi’s account, Mutati arrived brimming with names. He spoke of then-Transport CS Kipchumba Murkomen, whom he claimed to have access to, and through Murkomen he allegedly said he could reach Felix Koskei, the Head of Public Service and President Ruto’s Chief of Staff, the most powerful civil servant in the country. He also invoked Farouk Kibet, the personal assistant to the President whose influence within State House has become the stuff of political legend.
The name-dropping did not stop there. Mutati allegedly threw Oscar Sudi’s name into the mix as well. Sudi, the Kapsaret MP, is widely regarded as one of President Ruto’s most politically connected and feared allies, a man whose proximity to the presidency was, by his own design and public perception, near absolute.
Politicians and commentators had long described the Sudi-Farouk axis as the informal gateway to the head of state. For a retiree hunting a parastatal chair with no obvious political connections, Mutati’s name-dropping must have felt like striking gold.
Musembi told the court exactly what he felt in that moment. “When the defendant dropped those big names I felt like I was dealing with the right team to assist me secure the appointment as board chair of KURA since the defendant kept promising me it was easy as long as I was ready to comply with their demands,” he stated in his testimony.
Cash in Dollars, Delivered in Envelopes
The cash demands began almost immediately. On December 21, 2023, just weeks after the first meeting, Mutati allegedly asked for Sh3 million, which he said needed to be handed to Koskei personally as a facilitation fee for the appointment.
Musembi, by his own admission, complied without hesitation. He withdrew the funds, converted them into US dollars in denominations of 100, counting out 191 notes in total, packaged them into a brown envelope and drove to Muthaiga Square to make the delivery.
The scene at Muthaiga Square was, by Musembi’s account, almost cinematic in its understated audacity. “I found the defendant waiting alone in a car, a Mercedes-Benz grey in colour. The defendant took the money in form of dollars and promised me that he was to deliver the money to Felix Koskei the same day,” Musembi told the court. The following day, December 23, 2023, Mutati allegedly returned with an update. The delivery had been made, he said. Koskei had received the funds.
But a new complication had apparently emerged. Koskei, Mutati allegedly told Musembi, did not work alone.
The appointment required sign-off from Murkomen, Sudi and Farouk as well. Each of them, Mutati allegedly said, wanted a cut.
The figure he named was Sh5 million for the trio.
Musembi’s testimony lays bare just how completely the fraud had trapped him by this point. “Because I had legitimate expectations to become the board chair of KURA, I did not want to delay because the defendant was pushing me so much to give out the money so that I do not miss the chance. I mobilised the money as soon as the defendant wanted and handed over the money to the defendant in cash,” he told the court.
The Borrowing Spree and the DCI
With the initial instalments paid and the appointment still not forthcoming, the demands continued to multiply. Mutati allegedly pivoted to a new story entirely, telling Musembi that he was also chasing a Sh3 billion contract with the Kenya National Highways Authority for road construction.
He needed another Sh3 million for facilitation costs, Mutati said, promising it would all be repaid. The pattern, which courts elsewhere have seen in confidence fraud cases, was classic: each payment was justified by a plausible new development, and each new development required another payment.
By the time the total losses crystallised at Sh63 million, Musembi had finally turned to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations.
The DCI, according to court documents, managed to trace Mutati, and he was subsequently arraigned at Kibera Law Courts on criminal charges arising from the matter. But even that development did not close the saga. The civil suit in the High Court runs parallel to the criminal proceedings, and Musembi has had to navigate both simultaneously.
In a twist that has added a remarkable layer to the proceedings, Mutati has not simply denied the allegations. He has gone on the offensive. According to documents before the court, Mutati turned the tables entirely, claiming that it was in fact Musembi who owed him money.
Specifically, Mutati allegedly sent a counter-demand through his lawyers claiming that Musembi had borrowed Sh47 million from him and had yet to repay it in full. The demand was sent to Musembi’s lawyers, instructing them to ensure their client settled the debt.
The Architecture of the Scam
What the Musembi case lays bare is not just the audacity of the accused but a structural vulnerability in how Kenyans seeking state appointments perceive the route to power.
Farouk Kibet has for years been publicly described, even by senior Kenya Kwanza politicians, as the de facto gatekeeper to President Ruto.
Murkomen himself, before his elevation to cabinet, publicly praised Farouk as an indispensable figure, noting that accessing the President required clearing with his personal assistant first.
Oscar Sudi has cultivated a similar reputation as a political fixer whose endorsement carries real weight. Felix Koskei, as Head of Public Service, holds formal authority over the apparatus through which state appointments flow.
None of those named have been accused of any wrongdoing in this matter. There is no suggestion in the case that any of them received a single shilling of the money Musembi paid.
What Mutati allegedly did was exploit the public mythology that surrounds these figures, their proximity to power, their informal influence, the general belief that appointments in Kenya do not happen through merit alone.
He weaponised reputation, not relationship.
The Musembi case is not an isolated phenomenon. Kenya has in recent years seen a proliferation of what investigators call appointment brokers, individuals who market their alleged connections to the presidency or key government offices and collect fees from desperate job-seekers willing to pay almost any amount for a foothold in the state.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations has handled multiple such cases, though few have involved sums as large as what Musembi claims to have lost.
A Retiree’s Expensive Dream
There is a painful human story beneath the legal arguments. Musembi is a man who spent his working life in public service, retiring from the KRA, one of the country’s more technically demanding revenue agencies.
He was not an obvious mark. He was not naive. He simply wanted something that many retired public servants want, a recognition of his years of service in the form of a prestigious board appointment, and he believed, as many do, that such appointments require navigating informal channels rather than official ones.
That belief, it appears, cost him Sh63 million and his peace of mind. He is now crisscrossing Nairobi’s courts, pursuing a man who has flipped the narrative and is demanding money back.
The KURA chairmanship, meanwhile, has long since been filled through other channels. The seat that was supposed to be his remains, for him, permanently out of reach.
The case continues before the High Court in Nairobi.
