The treasury says it paid Sh6.3 billion – 10 per cent of the total cost for the two dams – to Milan in Italy in 2017.But the Italian contractors say they don’t have money because it was taken away. They can’t explain, yet we are servicing a loan as a country.
The Sh65 billion Kimwarer and Arror dams now only appear in the fertile imagination of Kerio Valley Development as Authority officials and the Treasury, are now under investigations.
First, the corrupt officials decided to launder their money through financial institutions in London from Italy because they needed to deposit their “dirty money” at a bank.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) says Sh4 billion was re-routed to a bank in London and soon after to another bank in Nairobi.
Second, through a process known as “layering” , the traffickers sent the dam proceeds through various wire transfers to different accounts in Nairobi all the while varying the amount of their deposits and withdrawals to make the paper-trail harder to follow.
“We have the account number the money was sent to in London and Nairobi. We don’t know why the money was being sent to Nairobi and that is part of our investigations,” DCI Director George Kinoti said.
Finally, according to the police, the money was withdrawn in US dollars from a bank in Westlands and the now-laundered Ksh4b money re-enters the mainstream economy, appearing to originate from a perfectly legal transaction.
Kinoti claimed the Sh4 billion “is in people’s houses.”
Detectives want to find out the reason the money found its way back to Kenya in their ongoing investigations into the stalled Sh63 billion Kimwarer and Arror dam projects in Elgeyo Marakwet County.
The Sh6.3 billion was reportedly for mobilisation of resources to enable Italian firm, CMC di Ravenna, start the projects.
