DCI is investing the a case that involves Governor Okoth Obado who is allegedly plotting to kill his former business associate Jared Kwaga.
Investigators are understood to have received an anonymous letter detailing a scheme by Obado and his associates to eliminate Jared Kwaga, who had close businesses dealings with Obado. The two have had a falling out, the reason is not clear.
Yesterday Kwaga confirmed the DCI had summoned him to shed light on a plot to murder him.
“DCI officers have summoned me to record a statement with them,” he told the Star.
The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission has gone to court seeking various orders against Kwaga relating to millions of shillings that he allegedly wired to Obado’s children abroad.
It remains unclear exactly what business dealings or other issues triggered the falling out between Kwaga and Obado.
However, the EACC says in court filings that Obado and his family worked with Kwaga to orchestrate a Sh2 billion theft from Migori county coffers.
“Preliminary investigations have raised reasonable suspicion that the embezzled public funds have been used by the governor, his wife and the said close proxies, the respondents herein, to accumulate property and illicit wealth,” EACC says in one filing.
The bad blood is likely to fuel efforts of the EACC, that is going flat out to put Obado at the centre of the looting.
So far, the EACC has confirmed that Obado benefitted from fictitious contracts amounting to Sh38,949,376.
The governor’s beneficial children are named as Dan Ochola Okoth, Jerry Zachary Okoth and Susan Scarlet Okoth.
The anti-graft agency also froze the accounts of Obado’s wife, Hellen Adhiambo Odie.
In the court fillings, it has emerged that Kwaga is a man of means with a vast amount of wealth and properties across the country.
The EACC has frozen his assets and that of six family members, including his wife and mother.
The High Court issued orders barring Kwaga and his family from selling or transferring 65 properties —including maisonettes, apartments and land — together valued at more than Sh382 million.
Of the 65 properties the High Court placed a caveat on 42 that belong to Kwaga, excluding 17 he transferred after police raided his home early last year.
The properties include four maisonettes in Nairobi, an apartment in Nairobi and several tracts of land mostly in Migori town.
“The Commission has established that in just four days after it carried out search on the 1st defendant’s [Kwaga] residence, he transferred 17 parcels out of the 59 parcels registered in his name to the interested parties herein,” the EACC says.
EACC wants the seven plus their 14 firms to refund Sh1, 971,179,180 obtained from Migori county.
Detectives also want the seven suspects to forfeit to the government the 65 properties frozen by the court.
The brothers are Joram Opala Otieno and Patroba Ochanda Otieno, and matriarch Penina Auma Otago.
Other suspects are Christine Akinyi and Carolyne Anyango Ochola, a sister-in-law to Kwaga.
According to the EACC, the seven family members registered 16 firms that were special purpose vehicles for fraudulently securing tenders from the MIgori county government.
EACC investigators established that some of the firms received huge payments from the county government before they were incorporated.
“In a span of slightly over three years, 2013-2017, these newly registered companies transacted a total of Sh1,971,179,180.20 exclusively received from the county government of Migori, which amount was glaringly disproportionate to their known legitimate sources of income,” the EACC told the High Court.