The Nigerian group specializes
in financial fraud and human trafficking activities both in Kenya and within
the East African region.
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| Interior CS Fred Matiang’i |
The Weekly
Vision online has for the last two weeks been investigating a
cartel composed mainly of Nigerian nationals that has been fleecing innocent
people of their valuables. The cartel based in Nairobi is led by one
man affectionately nicknamed "The Saint" by his contemporaries. The group specializes
in financial fraud and human trafficking activities both in Kenya and within
the East African region.
This publication has been made
to understand that a section of officers drawn from the department of immigration, security and some unscrupulous lawyers were drafted into these illegal
operations. The immigration officers were drafted specifically to deal with the
human trafficking aspect of the operations. Security officers are there to
provide “protection”
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| "The Saint" |
The said leader
of the groups occasionally visits Nigeria, his home country to recruit young
boys and girls into the network. Once they land into in Kenya, each one of them
is assigned specific duties on how to run the illegal errands. We have been
told by our source within the group that hundreds of both Nigerian and Kenyans
youngsters are languishing in Kenya prisons and remands having been the unlucky
ones, those apprehended by the police while conduction some missions.
At one stage one of the officers at the
immigration department received 27 Nigerian passports ostensibly to renew the mandatory
visas, which were about to expire. The leader of the group “The Seint” rents
home for his team in estates like TRM Thika road, an estate next to Winners
Chapel on Mombasa road, Kilimani, some are even housed in Kikuyu and Ruiru.
We
managed to trace a victim who narrated to us how he was duped by an individual
within the group who requested that he accepts money to be deposited on his
business account. The man’s family business account was debited with over
Ksh.5m, money that is now a subject of investigations by the anti-banking fraud
department of the Central bank of Kenya. In the meantime his account has been
flagged and he cannot access funds to run his business.
The Victim operates
an Mpesa agency in Mlolongo area in addition to being an agent of several
commercial banks. The Nigerians had been his clients for a while. For some
transactions to take place, they didn’t need to appear in person, all one of
the Nigerians needed to do was to call him and the transaction would be
completed. “Saint”, real name is Steven is a man not many people know by face.
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