Wakanda News Details

Is it end of the road for oil scam fugitive Devani?

FILE PHOTO | NMG 

If he will be charged in court in Kenya, Yagnesh Devani, the fugitive businessman who has been on the run for the past decade, will make history should he eventually face graft charges over the highest amount ever looted in a scandal in Kenya.

Devani also attended the much-publicised Sh1 million a plate lunch to fund-raise for former President Mwai Kibaki’s re-election campaign

“It was also revealed that his ties with the late President Daniel arap Moi led to Triton Petroleum Limited clinching a lucrative contract to supply petroleum products to the Kenya Power and Lighting Company several times,” writes Brian Chama in the book Anti-Corruption Tabloid Journalism in Africa.

Some years before the scandal broke, Devani’s brother Harish Devani, said to be the owner of the multi-million complex Simmers Plaza in Westlands, allegedly committed suicide after swindling close associates of Mr Moi of millions of dollars in tender scandals associated with Kenya Power and Lighting Company and Kenya Ports Authority.

Yagnesh Devani allegedly pulled off a swindle through his company, Triton Petroleum Limited, which he registered in 2000 hoping to cash in on an open tender system which had been introduced to help small indigenous oil companies access fairly priced crude oil for processing at the refinery in Mombasa.

Without any indigenous oil supplies by then, Triton acquired both crude oil and petroleum products from other companies and sold them to companies in Kenya under the scheme known as the Open Tender System (OTS).

You may also like

More from Business Daily

National Trust for Historic Preservation

Politics Facts

Literature Facts

Facts About Women