The move comes amidst a sporadic rise in scandals touching on the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (KEMSA) and one involving condemned sugar unfit for consumption.
The High Court in Nairobi has frozen personal bank accounts registered in the names of the Chief Registrar of the Judiciary, Anne Atieno Amadi, as well as her son Brian Ochieng Amadi and two others.
The court on Thursday, May 18 ordered that no withdrawals be made without approval, coming after Amadi was sued alongside her son Brian and others by a company in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) that deals with gold, as reported by Citizen Digital.
In the petition, Bruton Gold Trading LLC alleged that the suspects, acting on behalf of the law firm Amadi and Associates Advocates, illegally obtained over Ksh89 million for gold that they never supplied.
The firm further claimed that it was interested in purchasing gold from Kenya and met Daniel Ndegwa Kangara, one of the suspects in the alleged scheme, who was to deliver gold for the purposes of exporting to Dubai for sale following an agreement between the two parties.
The firm argued that it sent Ksh71 million to Amadi’s law firm, but no gold was exported from Kenya to Dubai.
While suing the Judiciary registrar, the company further claimed that investigations by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) had revealed that she was the registered proprietor of Amadi and Associates Advocates.
They further claimed that the probe had uncovered Amadi’s hand in opening the account where the money was deposited after she joined the Judiciary.
They furthermore claimed that the funds received by the firm were withdrawn by Amadi’s son and two others without adequate documentation as required by the Proceeds of Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Act.
The Dubai firm further noted that Amadi later contacted them with the aim of clearing the sum within six months, to which they declined as there was no security performance on the part of the defendants.
The move comes amidst a sporadic rise in scandals touching on the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (KEMSA) and one involving condemned sugar unfit for consumption.
In the KEMSA scandal, the Global Fund was forced to cancel a Ksh3.7 billion mosquito nets tender owing to KEMSA’s irregular procurement process. This resulted in President William Ruto disbanding the entire KEMSA board and sacking Josephine Mburu as the Principal Secretary of the State Department for Public Health and Professional Standards.
As for the sugar scandal, President Ruto suspended Kenya Bureau of Standards Managing Director, Bernard Njiraini and other government officials within KEBS, Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI), the National Police Service (NPS), among others.
KEBS later appointed Esther Ngari as MD in an acting capacity pending a substantive replacement.
Amadi was last in the public eye during the swearing-in of President Ruto on September 13, 2022, at the Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani, a ceremony she presided over.
