Raila caught up in smoking-hot BAT bribery scandal

CORD leader Raila Odinga is the third top opposition politician to be dragged into the British American Tobacco (BAT) scandalous operations in Kenya. According to Paul Hopkins, who worked for BAT in Africa for 13 years, individuals close to Raila blocked bid to have BAT’s key rival – Mastermind – pay taxes to Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA).

Hopkins told UK’s The Independent that BAT had an elaborate plan to drive Mastermind out of business that included bribing tax officials to disclose confidential information and paying the rival’s officials to disclose vital corporate secrets.

After he got the crucial information on Mastermind’s huge tax arrears, Hopkins said he was instructed by senior BAT officials to pile pressure on KRA to be more aggressive in tax collection.

The push is said to have been partially successful as the then permanent secretary in the office of the prime minister, Andrew Mondoh, intervened in favour of Mastermind. “When the KRA wrote to Mastermind’s bankers threatening to freeze accounts until the outstanding amounts were paid, officials in the office of former Kenyan prime minister Raila Odinga stepped in and ordered them to suspend the demands,” Hopkins told the paper and even produced a copy of the letter.

In the letter May 2010 letter addressed to the then KRA boss Michael Waweru, Mondoh (currently the head of administrative advisers working in Raila’s private office in Upper Hill, Nairobi) reminded the taxman of a telephone conversation that he had with Raila and directed that the demand to have Mastermind pay its taxes withing 30 days be suspended.

“This is further to your telephone conversation with the Rt. Hon. Prime Minister on April 28, 2010 on the above subject.   You are requested to put on hold the enforcement action which you had instituted against Mastermind Tobacco Kenya Limited, in order to facilitate further review of the matter,” reads the letter in part.

Hopkins has also revealed that he made a KSh 7.6 million donation to 2013 Narc-Kenya presidential candidate Martha Karua. In return, the donation was intended to facilitate prevention of BAT’s rival from supplying technology equipment to Kenya meant to combat cigarette smuggling in the country.

Martha Karua has admitted receiving about KSh 2 million from Hopkins saying that she thought it was a donation on a personal capacity and not a bribe from BAT. She said any person within her campaign team who purported to accept a donation in exchange for influence of government procurement was acting beyond the scope of their authority, without her knowledge and in their individual capacity.

Another leader implicated in the BAT bribes in Kenya is CORD co-principal Moses Wetangula who is said to have been bribed in 2012 when he was trade minister. Wetangula termed the claims that BAT bought him and his wife an ait ticket as nauseating, unfortunate, scandalous, malicious and slanderous to the extreme. 

He has subsequently sued for BAT and British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for defamation over the issue. His lawyer, Senator James Orengo, said the report aired by BBC had caused him stress, anxiety and embarrassment. (TUKO)