Last week, the high court jailed Jared Otieno’s associate Kevin Obia for 1 year for his involvement in the Sh13.7 million gold scam.
The Magistrate however expressed frustrations that Jared Otieno, one of the main cartels in the fake gold syndicate was still at large.
“Jared Otieno is still at large and they have failed to arrest him,” the magistrate said as he issued his ruling also adding that there was a bigger person behind the scam.
According to a local gossip blog, Otieno’s wife Kendi Mwiti is in Dubai celebrating her second pregnancy.
Kendi’s Instagram is restricted, however, in the photoshoot she captioned one of baby bump photos saying: “I am so grateful girls, best surprise ever.”
Kendi was dressed in a turquoise long flowing gown. The only jewelry was her wedding ring, a Sterling Silver Purple Amethyst gemstone ring and well-manicured nails. She also rocked a Kenya flag coloured bracelet.
As she enjoys, security forces in Kenya also do, from proceeds of Jared’s crime.
It is quite curious how DCI often arrests gold scammers but never show their faces.
Our sources confirm that Jared Otieno was arrested last Friday, but later released after doing what he normally does best; bribe all the levels of security forces.
In a high magnitude dossier that has been seen by this blogger, the corruption in the gold scam, collusion with security agencies and the frustration of court cases is laid bare.
With so much money, Jared Otieno who had in recent times stepped away from the day to day running of the gold scam business, is eyeing the Homabay Governor seat come 2022.
His gold scam business is currently run by his brother-in-law Bruno Oliende, who is also eyeing the Suna East Seat currently held by a common thief and petty scammer Junet Mohamed.
“He (Jared Otieno) no longer does the business and he has his boys”, said our source.
Gold Scam’s damning report
A report by the Joint Task Force for Anti & Counter Corruption (JTACC), an organization that assists Governments and Private Sector to deal with corruption, fraud and money laundering names Kenya as one of the key conduits of gold scamming business.
Unfortunately, the report also adds that the gold smuggling business also funds the terrorism in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Founded in 2015, JTACC had done extensive research on the gold smuggling syndicate.
The transnational criminal syndicate whose heads in Kenya is well known (Jared Otieno and Tom Ngoe) has roots in Tanzania and Uganda too. According to JTACC, in 2015, they pulled off a sophisticated ‘scam’ designed to defraud the Mauritius based investment fund, OHR Strategic Investments and OHR Partners resulting in a financial loss to the company to the tune of Sh762 million.
As seen in the case where a local law firm was used to launder Nigerian Scammer Huspuppis lot. This syndicate mostly operating in Tanzania and Kenya ‘used existing companies and business professionals
to create the superficial appearance of a legal and industry-compliant export operation’.
In this gold scam underworld, Jared Otieno’s name is ‘Smith Mackenzie’ and his reach extends to the middle east and greater Africa.
Non- Delivery scam
The gold scams often use a non-delivery scam method.
Non delivery scam involves the “presentation of problems to a buyer that are preventing delivery of the product, and that such problems can be solved by spending more money. Funds requested by the syndicate are often said to be for payment purposes including but not limited to: insurance, transport, taxes or government fees related to the gold “.
In the scamming of OHR Mauritius, the gold scammers even duped the United Nations (UN) body in charge of mineral exploitation in the DRC, the UNMNONUSCO – The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
A man named Christian Sailie Richard was very instrumental in this scam as he obtained letters alleged authored by officials in the Kenyan Govt and UNMONUSCO
“In support of his claim, Christian Sailie Richard provided several letters alleged to have been issued from UNMONUSCO, the first of which was allegedly addressed to ‘Yahmed Forwarders,’ an export and logistics firm, on the 20th of June 2015. This document purported to be signed by Charlotte Cook of
UNMONUSCO,” the JTACC document says.
The MONUSCO letter that Mr Sailie Richard had used were confirmed fake later by a MONUSCO personnel named Cook.
Kenyan firms
In the scam that Ms Mwiti is now enjoying the proceeds of, Kenyan firms such as East African Cargo Handlers, HiSpeed Freight Services, Global Insurance Agencies Limited, Anto Insurance Brokers Limited, and Okundi & Company Advocates are named.
In the OHR scamming, East African Cargo Handlers whose CEO is Jared Otieno aka Smith Mackenzie was paid a total of Sh196 million through HiSpeed Freight Services.
Okundi & Company Advocates, a firm associated with a faceless lawyer Tom Okundi was the overseer.
The invoices names a William Fantozzi whom investigatons believe worked with the gold cartels.
There were other payments where funds were carried out of Okundi & Company Advocates who had an escrow account, witnessed by Scott Whitaker and Zevon Durham, both U.S. Security Contractors from the firm ASSET Security.
The insurance frms, Global Insurance Agencies Limited, Anto Insurance Brokers Limited, are not registered therefore are fake entities.
Tanzania firms
The scam on OHR were also carried out using some Tanzanian firms; namely, Matcheasy Lda, Hugo Filipe Timoteo Inacio, East Gate Relocation Services, Advanced Security Co. Ltd, Goldstone Insurance, Evermetals Co. Ltd, Unicredit Microfinance, AAA Insurance Co. Ltd and Delicore Metals Company Ltd just to mention some.
It should be noted that Tanzania has a huge gold reserve and therefore more firms were involved.
The scam extended up to even Guinea, in West Africa.
Jared Otieno’s firm East African Cargo Handlers is registered under the names Daniel Ndegwa Kang’ara with a physical address in Hurlingham Nairobi and a bank account at Stanbic and former NIC (currently part of NCBA) and DTB banks.
There connect in DRC is a guy named Guy Joseph Balangoy Mangala.
Kenyan judiciary
Even as the largely compromised Kenyan judiciary cries foul over the lack of arrest of Jared “Smith Mackenzie” Otieno.
His wife enjoys the fruit of his criminality in Dubai and we await the holier than though IEBC to allow him to run after being issued with a certificate by EACC, DCI and other authorities.
Kenyans must not forget this scam which runs deeper and has destroyed the lives of people in DRC, KENYA, TANZANIA.
Tanzania is more likely to crack the whip as the state has moved to construct and smelt gold in-country.
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