With the recent arrest of a driver transporting over 1.4 million fake United States Dollars (USD), one wonders what happened to the cases of fake gold in Kenya.
Why are the fake gold scam cases muted by the media?
Where do they disappear to?
What happened to Jared Otieno?
Just to bring readers to speed, in 2015, Jared Otieno, a previously unknown businessman throws a lavish Ksh15 million wedding to his sweetheart Kendi Mwiti attended by Kisumu Senator Anyang’ Nyong’o (now Governor), Meru’s Kiraitu Murungi and former cabinet minister Chris Obure, the who is who of the Kenyan political scene. However, his source of wealth would soon turn out to be shady. In actual fact, Jared Otieno, who describes himself as a businessman is said to be the mastermind and kingpin in the gold scam world alongside former AFC Leopards chairman Allan Kasavuli and Shabana Chairman Jared Nivaton, closely associated with television screen siren Lilian Muli.
In order to pull off the scams, one must have a battery of lawyers, one such bright guy is Tom Ngoe.
Thomas Otieno Ngoe aka Tom Ngoe is a lawyer, who specialised in advising foreign companies on investment regulations, sectoral caps and regulatory issues relating to various sectors in Kenya. Him and his team actively advises and opines on barriers to entry, which include foreign investment regulations, policies, and specific commitments under various trade agreements, customs duty. This is how he easily land himself into unsuspecting foreign investors with interest in gold business. He is the brains behind the cartels that wreaked havoc in the city in the past two years.
Tom Ngoe is a smooth criminal, he even paid to have his images online erased including on LinkedIn where he is supposed to be displaying himself as a professional.
According to Directorate of Criminal Intelligence (DCI) officers, the players in the trade, alongside others are said to have been involved in the scam either through ignorance or direct involvement.
Dozen of unsuspecting foreign nationals are being swindled large amounts of money by these fraudsters led by Tom Ngoe.
Ngoe has been mentioned severally in the serial fraud cases of Jared Otieno.
Last year, a man linked to the United Arab Emirates royal family is alleged to have been conned by a group that includes, among others, Bungoma senator Moses Wetang’ula, Zaheer Jhanda and Jared Otieno. Their lawyer has always been Tom Ngoe.
In 2017, Jared Otieno had his first trouble with the authorities when he was accused of obtaining Sh22 million from two foreign complainants.
After that, several cases came up including a famous arrest this year that exposed his expensive lifestyle with little or no known income channel.
On his part, Ngoe who has already testified in court in a case, is said to have received the cash on behalf of a foreign buyer who was prospecting for business in the country. He, according to details in the newspapers last year, was approached by the buyer to open an escrow account.
This was a deal involving a foreigner and gold seller known as Samir Munyinyi and his associate, Anthony Kanga. And it was 360kgs of gold.
In this deal, the investors were required to pay USD 100,000 for export taxes while the lawyer, Ngoe, would retain 5kgs of gold as collateral. “We paid 100,000 dollars for taxes and 10,000 dollars as fee for Otieno,” the foreigner said.
Ngoe would then create an escrow account where payments were done through a bank transfer from the foreigner’s company to the escrow account.
Later, one of the foreigner’s workers, Razia Chelimo informed him that she had discovered that Otieno was not registered as an advocate. “We confronted him and he explained to us that he was a lawyer but he was not practicing,” he said.
“We insisted that we wanted to accompany him to the bank but he refused saying it wasn’t necessary and after a few days, Munyinyi came up with another problem. He said he could not get export licence for the consignment and therefore needed another USD 100,000 to solve the problem,” he said.
Ngoe who listed as a key witness in the above case made deliberate efforts not to show up in court claiming that he was having an emergency. As a result, the hearing was postponed to a later date.
Lawyer Ngoe has millions of money stashed in proxy bank accounts.
The cartels in the gold scam business must be dismantled and scattered away starting with the aforementioned lawyers. We will keep tabs on these shameless characters who have ruined the reputation of this country.
The Kenyan authorities must come out clear and defeat them.
