Jared Otieno, the notorious gold fraudster who has since 2019 been lying low was last month secretly charged with stealing six kilos of gold worth Sh54 million from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) with the assistance of immigration officials.
Otieno was arrested on April 13 at his house in Runda for being part of a gang including Liberians Joseph Bedell, Caranze Owne and police chief inspector Peter Owiyo that stole the gold from JKIA on March 30.
The gold, according to an intelligence brief seen by sauce.co.ke was stolen with the assistance of Doreen Songwa, an immigration official who issued Bedell a fake electronic visa that he used to enter Kenya. She also falsified Bedell’s travel history in the Automated Border Control system (ABC).
Bedell was apparently aware of the gold belonging to a Korean national, Shanmugam Sundar Darmaraju that was being shipped from Liberia and booked the same flight KQ 509. The gold which was part of Darmaju’s luggage disappeared at JKIA.
It is Songwa and Owiyo who assisted Bedell to escape from the airport with the gold which eventually made its way to a waiting Jared Otieno, says an intelligence report that was handed over to the DCI as part of investigations.
The theft of the six kilos of gold which was in transit from Liberia to Dubai via JKIA has raised so much alarm in security circles that the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) has complained on the involvement of state officials in transnational crime.
The DCI even wrote a protest letter to the Immigration Department seeking an explanation on why its officials were not only aiding gold fraudsters to frustrate victims but were now helping criminals to steal gold that is in transit through JKIA.
According to the DCI, Unsculprous immigration officials are being used to deport foreigners who have been defrauded, aiding criminals in stealing gold that is in transit through JKIA and at the same time issuing visas to well-known fraudsters.
“Scammers are using any means possible to intimidate foreign complaints such as threats and unjustified travel stop orders place by corrupt Immigration officers,” said the DCI.
“Immediately the buyer realizes that is being scammed and reports to the police, the scammers call their Immigration Department contacts who are in their cartel and start proceedings to deport these foreign buyers,” the DCI said.
When some of these victims discover that the gold is fake after they have traveled back to their countries of origin, they are usually denied entry again in Kenya.
“His or her passport is stamped as ‘Prohibited Immigrant’ for 5 years. For their work, it is alleged that the Immigration officers involved in the scam receive 10 percent of the proceeds,” the confidential report read.
The officials and police officers who have been roped into the gold syndicates receive 10 percent of all the proceeds as protection fees. All this according to the DCI is done through the leadership of Jared Otieno who is the link between Kenyan gold scammers and the immigration department.
According to an intelligence report, Jared Otieno who is the cog of the immigration mess caused by gold fraudsters at JKIA is apparently too influential that when he was arrested last month, rogue police officers and the unscrupulous officials at the Judiciary tried as much as possible to keep it a secret.
All the suspects in the fraud apart from Jared Otieno were publicly whisked to court. Owiyo was charged at the Milimani Law Courts on April 25 in full glare of media cameras. Bedel and Ownze were charged at the same court on five days earlier on April 20.
Otieno on the other hand was charged at the rarely covered JKIA court on May 10. In fact the DCI unlike in previous times when Otieno has been arrested curiously kept quiet about their high catch. This is apart from the fact that all the suspects were charged separately for a crime they committed jointly.
“On diverse dates between March 30 and April 4 at an unknown place within the republic of Kenya, you jointly with others not before court conspired to commit a felony namely stealing 6.4 kilos of gold valued at USD408,229 being the property of Shanmugam Sundar Darmaraju,” says Otieno’s charge sheet which we have obtained more than a month later.
The controversial man Jared Otieno Kiasa is out on a Sh10 million cash bail. The case is coming up for hearing next week.
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