Kenya Court charges top railway officials in $3 billion railway fraud case

According to court documents, the total loss of public funds due to the fraud amounted to 221.4-million shillings ($2.20-million)

The heads of the agency that manages the state railway and of the public land were charged with fraud allegations by a Kenyan court on Monday over the allocation of land for a new train line linking the capital with East Africa’s biggest port worth $3-billion.

Considered to be one of the biggest infrastructure projects of President Uhuru Kenyatta, whose government embarked on an anti-graft drive this year, the train line between Mombasa and Nairobi is funded by the Republic of China.

16 businesspeople along with Mohammed Abdalla Swazuri and Atanas Kariuki Maina, chairman of the National Land Commission and managing director of the Kenya Railways Corporation respectively were pleaded not guilty to the charges made against them. According to court documents, the total loss of public funds due to the fraud amounted to 221.4-million shillings ($2.20-million)

The arrests were ordered by public prosecutor Noordin Haji after the investigations he worked upon suggested that the taxpayer money was siphoned through fake compensation claims for land used for the railway.

All the prosecuted land and rail foremen appeared before Chief Magistrate Lawrence Mugambi of the Anti-Corruption Court. No Chinese companies or individuals were named in the proceedings of the case.

Kenya’s economy is under serious threat as a result of the rows of scandals that hit the nation related to the loss of millions of shillings by theft from government bodies.

The billion dollar railway line was launched last year despite opposition leaders and Kenyan economists criticising the funding for increasing the country’s mountain of debt. The debt is estimated to be between 54-55 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the year 2017/18 by the International Monetary Fund.