A tea girl, gardener and caretaker of Afrosolutions company have been charged with obtaining Sh 100,000,000 for ‘fake gold’.
Consolata Achieng Kwendete, Washington Libese and Enock Mungwana Okonda are accused of obtaining the money from Ukranian businessman Kavalenko Henneddii, by falsely pretending that they were in a position to sell to him gold, a fact they knew to be false.
The three are alleged to have committed the offence between January and October 2018 at Afrosolutions company offices along Kaptei Road in Kileleshwa, Nairobi jointly with others not before court.
They denied the charges before Chief Magistrate Francis Andayi and were granted a bond of Sh 2 million or a cash bail of Sh 1 million.
Fell victim
The 47 year old businessman fell victim of the ‘now trending’ gold scummers after he was introduced to one Anton Chsherbakov by his acquittance in Ukraine back in 2016.
It is alleged that the same year, Henneddii travelled to Kampala Uganda with his colleagues where he met one Jeanot Bokwote, a Congolese National.
Jeanot claimed to own a company in Kampala by the name Dam Gemstones Expert Limited.
It is further alleged that the said Jeanot informed complainant that he had 350 KGS of gold and agreed to sell to them at USD 30,000 per Kilogram.
The complainant was allegedly asked to pay USD 300,000 (Sh 30,000,000) being money for export licence, Government flight taxes etc. The money was allegedly paid in cash to Jeanot.
He also met one John Getete who was a director at the said Dam Gemstones which was to facilitate the export of the consignment.
Henneddii allegedly flew to Dubai later to sell the gold but on arrival, he never found the said gold which was supposed to have been shipped.
He alleges that he was informed that the gold had not been flown to Dubai since a problem arose in Kampala and he was required to go back and solve them.
On arrival to Kampala, it is alleged that the complainant was asked to pay another USD 650,000.
It is claimed that he flew back to Ukraine to look for the money since he did not have it and went back to Kampala in February 2017 where he paid the money to Gatete.
Part of this money was allegedly for the his non criminal certificate which was given to him by the said Gatete upon payment.
He allegedly flew to Dubai later with Jeanot, Anton,and Gatete to sell the gold. Henneddii claims he was the one who paid for the four air tickets at USD 3,000.
United Nations inspection
Surprisingly, on arrival to Dubai, no gold again. This time the excuse was ‘United Nations Inspector’ who apparently wanted to see him.
The said Inspector by the name Francois Emile allegedly informed him that he needed to travel to Brussels, Belgium for authorization for transportation of gold.
He alleges that he again paid USD 130,000 for authorization in Belgium.
He was again told the shipment could not be done since there was a problem with his name. He alleges he was asked to change his passport name from Genaddii to Henaddii since the authorization had been issued under the new name.
He allegedly paid another USD 210,000 to Gatete for change of the documents.
Later he was allegedly asked to pay USD 382,000 for the ministry of finance in DRC. Gatete allegedly told him that Jeanot had been arrested as some people had complained against him having sold some gold and he sent him the OB number.
He was apparently informed to pay USD 110,000 to secure his release and another USD 30,000 for new documents. That was around October 2017.
Around early January 2018, Jeanot allegedly told him that it become difficult to ferry the consignment from Uganda to outside and said they should take it to Kenya where he had a friend for the job but the complainant declined.
Trip to Kenya
On 17 January, the said Jeanot called and informed him that he was travelling to Nairobi and if he (complainant) was still interested in the shipment, she should fly to Nairobi.
That is when he was taken to Afrosolutions company where he was introduced to one Joseph Kimo as the director and Zeddy Otieno as the operations manager.
There he was shown the gold and was allowed to randomly take samples which he took to the ministry of mining and they were found to be genuine gold.
They were again given an invoice of USD 538,825 which me later paid.
It is alleged that Kimo later started sending the complainant messages in WhatsApp saying Jeanot had failed to deliver a certain certificate and was therefore required to raise another USD 1 million to procure it.
Since the complainant could not raise such an amount, he came back to Kenya and met with Zeddy Otieno as Kimo was always busy and never available.
Zeddy allegedly told him that needed USD 300,000 to bribe some people so that they could skip the certificate.
After this, he was told the shipment would be ready in three days. However, Henneddii claims that Zeddy disappeared after the three days.
It is alleged that they later met him and again, he demanded USD 200,000 to solve the alleged problems but the complainant did not have that amount.
He allegedly left for Ukraine to look for the money and and returned to Nairobi on 16th October 2018 where he met Kimo.
The complainant ended up reporting the matter to DCI Headquarters. Brinks security firm which was hired to provide security over the gold is allegedly still holding two boxes but the content inside is now unknown up to date because of the back and forth games played.
The complainant claims he has lost approximately USD 6.5 million. He claims he can fully identify some of the suspects including Jeanot, Kimo, Zeddy among others.
