SGR Ticket Scammers to Spend More Nights Behind Bars

Will the government finally be able to completely deal with the corruption menace that is costing the country billions lost to unscrupulous individuals?

Well, after a public outcry over the recently exposed SGR ticketing scandal involving three Chinese officials, the government through the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions moved with speed and presented the suspects in court just days after their arrest.

The suspects were arraigned in a Mombasa court and charged with three counts of offering a bribe in order to influence an ongoing criminal investigation.

Appearing before Chief Magistrate Julius Nang’ea, the three employees of China Roads and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) denied all charges.

The court heard that on November 22, 2018, at the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) terminus in Mombasa, Li Gen, Li Xiaowu and Sun Xin gave Investigating Officer Andrew Warui and his team a bribe of Ksh.500,000 so as to tilt the investigations in their favour.

On the second count, they were charged with bribing Investigating Officer Warui and his team with Ksh.200,000 on November 23 in an attempt to influence the outcome of the investigations.

On the third count, Li Xiaowu was charged with giving the Investigating Officer a bribe of Ksh.200,000 on November 23, 2018.

The accused, through their lawyer, pleaded to be released on bail saying they had submitted their passports and travel documents to the investigating officers, hence, could not flee.

The prosecution, however, opposed their request for bail saying they would interfere with the case since they were even arrested while attempting to bribe officers in order to manipulate investigations.

Chief Magistrate Nang’ea directed the accused to remain in custody until Wednesday or Thursday when he will deliver a ruling.

Multiple sources have confirmed that the ticketing scam that involved manipulating the complex booking system operated by CRBC staff to split the ticket revenues between the Chinese railway operator and the cartel of insiders had been going on for a long time.

According to an insider, one aspect of the scheme under investigation involved creating refunds for tickets already issued to passengers on board for each of the four trips and channelling the refunds elsewhere.

Kenya Railways officials are said to have raised the red flag over an unusually high number of refunds, triggering an investigation that is likely to unearth millions of shillings in lost revenue since President Uhuru Kenyatta launched the service on June 1, 2017.

Intense monitoring revealed that the passengers who had allegedly been refunded were indeed inside the train ready to travel.

It is not clear how long the fraud had been run but well-placed sources within the ticketing docket said there are indications of up to Sh1 million per day on all trips having been stolen.

Responding to enquiries, China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) which sells about 4,000 tickets per day through a subsidiary firm Africa Star Railway Operations Company, admitted to have been alerted about an anomaly on the refunds with some of its officials having been “questioned” over the same.

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