Here is some money from your father, Mr President
US Secret Service Agents walk towards Air Force One prior to US President Barack Obama's departure from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, July 1, 2015. PHOTO | SAUL LOEB |
What you need to know:
- Govt agency is holding Sh55,933 that belongs to the family of the late Barack Hussein Obama.
- Obama senior died in a car accident in 1982.
US President Barack Obama’s visit has coincided with the news that a government agency is still holding money left by his Kenyan father.
President Obama will be in Nairobi to attend the Global Entrepreneurship Summit next week.
The Unclaimed Financial Assets Authority (UFAA) is holding Sh55,933 that belongs to the family of the late Barack Hussein Obama.
Obama senior died in a car accident in 1982 and the money is from a life insurance cover that was never paid to his beneficiaries upon his death.
UFAA chairman Vincent Kimosop was quoted on Tuesday in the Business Daily confirming that the agency is still holding the money. The agency holds unclaimed assets in trust for beneficiaries.
Records show that the money was put under the custody of the authority last year from the defunct Kenya National Assurance Corporation, which had been performing the same function.
The agency was established in 2012 to take charge of, among other things, bank deposits, unpaid dividends and pension savings owners have not claimed over the years.
LEGAL BATTLE
Obama senior had four wives and eight children. The wives included the US President’s mother, Ann Dunham, whom he met at the University of Hawaii in the US. The marriage, however, lasted only a few years.
Ms Dunham later married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian oil manager, and they moved with the young Obama to Jakarta.
Obama senior returned to Kenya, where he worked in the oil industry and eventually became an economist in the government of President Jomo Kenyatta.
Obama nominated his eldest son Roy, now know as Malik, and his youngest wife, Jael Otieno, as beneficiaries to his estate.
When he died, a legal battle erupted over the estate and involved his first wife Kezia, the mother of Malik, and Jael.
Obama senior at the time was estimated to have been worth Sh410,500.
Malik was recently in the news after selling personal letters from his step-brother, written before the latter went into politics.
President Obama is expected to be in the country for three days, the first visit since he assumed the reigns of the world’s most powerful nation in 2008.
