If he will be charged in court in Kenya, Yagnesh Devani, the fugitive businessman who has been on the run for the past decade, will make history should he eventually face graft charges over the highest amount ever looted in a scandal in Kenya.
The controversial businessman, a Kenyan citizen born on March 23, 1965, caused a nationwide oil shortage in December 2008, following what is commonly known as the Sh7.6 billion Triton oil scandal.
Last week, the Court of Appeal in the UK dismissed his application seeking asylum in the UK, setting the ground for his extradition to Kenya where he faces several charges of serious fraud.
Devani enjoyed high-level connections with the political elite in the government, including several Cabinet ministers and permanent secretaries in his heyday.
He is believed to have funded prominent politicians during the 2007 General Election campaigns.
Devani also attended the much-publicised Sh1 million a plate lunch to fund-raise for former President Mwai Kibaki’s re-election campaign
“It was also revealed that his ties with the late President Daniel arap Moi led to Triton Petroleum Limited clinching a lucrative contract to supply petroleum products to the Kenya Power and Lighting Company several times,” writes Brian Chama in the book Anti-Corruption Tabloid Journalism in Africa.
Some years before the scandal broke, Devani’s brother Harish Devani, said to be the owner of the multi-million complex Simmers Plaza in Westlands, allegedly committed suicide after swindling close associates of Mr Moi of millions of dollars in tender scandals associated with Kenya Power and Lighting Company and Kenya Ports Authority.
THE SCANDAL
Yagnesh Devani allegedly pulled off a swindle through his company, Triton Petroleum Limited, which he registered in 2000 hoping to cash in on an open tender system which had been introduced to help small indigenous oil companies access fairly priced crude oil for processing at the refinery in Mombasa.
He was the executive chairman of Triton and he held 4,999,5000 of the total share capital of five million shares. The remaining 500 were held by a company called Triton Network Solutions. None of the other three directors of Triton held shares in the company, court documents indicate.Without any indigenous oil supplies by then, Triton acquired both crude oil and petroleum products from other companies and sold them to companies in Kenya under the scheme known as the Open Tender System (OTS).In May and June 2008, an oil consignment had been delivered to the port of Mombasa aboard […]