City Lawyer Arraigned In Court Over Ksh6.8B Money Laundering Scheme
On Friday, an advocate from Kenya’s High Court was charged with forgery, uttering forged documents, and money laundering at the Chiefs Magistrates’ Court in Kahawa, Nairobi County.
Stephen Juma Ndeda was arrested following an exhaustive investigation by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) that began on June 26, 2023, in response to an intelligence report.
The report linked him to the aforementioned crimes committed on various dates in June 2020.
Detectives from the DCI Headquarters’ Financial Investigations Unit discovered that his law firm had received Ksh6.8 billion in wire transfers intended for the purchase of land.
HIGH-PROFILE LAWYER FACES COURT OVER ALLEGED MONEY LAUNDERING AND FORGERY SCANDAL
— DCI KENYA (@DCI_Kenya) October 4, 2024
An advocate of the High Court, Stephen Juma Ndeda has been arraigned before the Chiefs Magistrates’ Court at Kahawa to face charges of Forgery, Uttering Forged Documents, and Money Laundering. This… pic.twitter.com/sVItOEpv8l
The transaction was described as a purported purchase of a 50-acre plot of land in Kajiado County by an individual seller and a company acting as the buyer.
However, investigations revealed that the suspect’s law firm acted on behalf of both the seller and the buyer.
The seller agreed to sell the property for Ksh60,000,000, with an initial deposit of Ksh5,000,000 due within 90 days.
Further unraveling the plot revealed that the name of the initial purchaser mentioned was not the same entity that wired the funds to the seller.
Instead, a different company located in Sofia, Bulgaria sent the funds, which caught the attention of investigators because the company’s main business was arms.
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This fact raised additional concerns for the police, who suspected they had unintentionally discovered an international arms smuggling and money laundering syndicate.
However, the funds wired to the advocate’s bank account in Nairobi were immediately rerouted due to noncompliance with the bank’s internal policies and regulatory guidelines on money laundering and suspicious transaction reporting.
Other charges he faces include uttering forged documents and attempting to commit fraud by submitting the documents to a bank to facilitate the illegal transfer of funds from a foreign jurisdiction to Kenya.
The alleged seller has since denied signing any such documents and claiming no involvement in the scheme.
City Lawyer Arraigned In Court Over Ksh6.8B Money Laundering Scheme
