Feb, 26th 2021 – A businesswoman who benefitted from money stolen from the National Youth Service has been ordered to surrender close to Sh100 million to the State.
Lady Justice Mumbi Ngugi ordered Charity Wangui Gethi and her associate Samuel Wachenje to forfeit the money being proceeds of crime. This is after finding out that she illegally acquired the money as part of the sh791 million lost in the first NYS scandal in 2015.
Ngugi said there is evidence that the funds in her accounts are proceeds of a crime having been part of the funds fraudulently transferred from NYS. She said, “The only course open to court is to find that Sh97,682,424 in her accounts are proceeds of crime and liable to forfeiture to the State.”
Ngugi also ruled that there was a clear trail with evidence presented by the Asset Recovery Agency. The evidence shows that part of the money was moved from another key suspect’s account, Josephine Kabura into Wangui’s account, yet nothing was supplied to the NYS.
She added that the state does not recognize property acquired through stolen public funds. Ngugi said, “I have found that her explanation to the source of her funds is not tenable and leaves the court with only one conclusion that the money was stolen from NYS. Issuance on the order for forfeiture is therefore not a violation of her rights.”
The case against Wangui and Wachenje was filed by the asset recovery body. Their claim is that the two received the funds through a complex scheme of money laundering.
The judge ordered that money in Wangui’s Faulu bank account, sh79.6 million, her Standard Chartered Bank account which has sh7.8 million and at Old Mutual which contains Sh204,000 must be surrendered o the Government as well as sh10 million in Wachenje’s Family Bank account.