Inside Gichuru’s Sh20bn empire

• How self-initiated divorce case lifted the lid on former Kenya Power & Lighting Company boss’s best kept secrets and exposed him to investigation by British fraud unit
• Papers filed by former wife in divorce court claim $10 million held in a bank account at HSBC bank in St Helier on Jersey in the British Channel Islands

What started as a simple divorce case filed by former Kenya Power & Lighting Company boss Samuel Gichuru ended up fast-tracking his name to the list of wanted money launderers.

The Sunday Nation has established that British intelligence officers used some of the affidavits sworn in court during the divorce hearing to piece together bits of one of the most brazen cases of corruption during President Moi’s 24 years in office.

Last week the United Kingdom issued a warrant of arrest against Mr Gichuru and Nambale MP Chris Okemo over alleged corruption and money laundering.

Mr Gichuru is alleged to have received bribes and laundered money in excess of Sh1 billion through a company called Windward registered in Jersey, UK. (See separate story).

Sources familiar with the proceedings said Mr Gichuru may have won the divorce case, but his former wife, Salome Njeri, now deceased, dealt him a severe blow by lifting the lid on some of his best-kept secrets and questionable financial dealings.

In a certificate of urgency seeking an equal share of the matrimonial property filed in the Family Court in Nairobi on November 14, 2006, Njeri claimed Mr Gichuru controlled a multi-million-dollar estate, and that he was worth more than what was stated publicly.

She claimed that Mr Gichuru was operating foreign accounts, that some of the property had been acquired illegally and that he was planning to disinherit her by disposing her of the property and transferring some of it to his girlfriend.

Petitioned for divorce

“… during my marriage to the respondent, the respondent used to operate various bank accounts both locally and internationally and used to update me on our financial worth and investments,” she said, adding, “since the respondent has petitioned for divorce he has started to alienate, sale or transfer the matrimonial properties to the name of his girlfriend with the sole aim of disentitling me and cheating me of my rightful share of the matrimonial properties.”

Consequently, she asked the court to compel Mr Gichuru to “repatriate and transfer to the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court all the credit balances he holds in banks outside the country and especially the $10 million held with HSBC Bank Jersey Island, Sort Code 40-25-34, Account Number 42767791, P.O. Box 14 St. Helier, Jersey Channel Islands, within seven days of the court’s order”.

However, Mr Gichuru contested the claims, saying they were spurious and malicious.

“…if this was indeed a joint account as alleged nothing would be easier than for the applicant to exhibit bank statements or some other such evidence of the existence of the account or the amount held in the account,” he responded in an affidavit on December 19, 2006.

He also dismissed claims by Njeri in another affidavit sworn on November 22, 2006, that the sum in question and other property had been acquired through illegal means.

“Indeed, in a separate affidavit also sworn on November 22, 2006, the applicant has alleged that the money held in this account as well as other properties owned by me were improperly acquired and I am surprised that she should come to a court of law to lay a claim on what she alleges are ill gotten gains,” he said.

If Mr Gichuru had been taken aback by the former wife’s claims, he must have been chilled to the bone when British police sprung him a warrant of arrest for money laundering over suspicious financial dealings in Jersey Island.

It has also emerged that the money Mr Gichuru is accused of laundering is just a fraction of his vast business empire and fortune.

Friends and former associates interviewed put his worth at a conservative Sh20 billion, though others claimed he has assets in excess of Sh50 billion.

Lawyer Ahmednasir Abdullahi, who represented Ms Njeri in the divorce case in 2006, said she estimated their matrimonial property at between Sh70 billion and Sh100 billion.