An advocate of the High Court of Kenya was on Friday arraigned at the Chiefs Magistrates’ Court at Kahawa in Nairobi County facing charges of forgery, uttering forged documents, and money laundering.
The city lawyer was arrested after exhaustive investigations by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) which kicked off following an intelligence report on June 26, 2023 linking him to the mentioned crimes perpetrated on diverse dates in June 2020.
Detectives from the Financial Investigations Unit drawn from the DCI Headquarters uncovered that his law firm had received a total of Ksh6.8 billion through wire transfers meant for purchase of land.
The transaction was carried out as a purported purchase of a 50-acre piece of land in Kajiado County between an individual seller and a company acting as the buyer.
An image of Kenyan one thousand shilling notes in bundles
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However, investigations uncovered that the suspect’s law firm was acting on behalf of both the seller and the buyer with the seller having agreed to sell the property for a price of Ksh60,000,000 with Ksh5,000,000 being the initial deposit to be paid within 90 days.
Further untangling the plot, it was uncovered that the name of the initial purchaser mentioned was not the same entity who wired the money to the seller.
Instead, a different company located in Sofia, Bulgaria sent the funds, a detail that caught the attention of investigators as the company’s main business was arms.
This fact further raised flags with the police realising they might have unwittingly discovered an international arms smuggling and money laundering syndicate.
However, the money wired to the advocate’s bank account in Nairobi was immediately rerouted due to non-compliance with the bank’s internal policies and regulatory guidelines on money laundering and reporting of suspicious transactions.
Other charges he is facing include; uttering forged documents and attempting to commit fraud through submitting the documents in the bank to facilitate the illicit transfer of funds from a foreign jurisdiction to Kenya.
The alleged seller has since denied signing any such documents and denied any involvement in the scheme.
An image representation of a woman in handcuffs behind bars.
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Nation
