Akinyi could lose Sh60 million linked to drugs

 

Suspected drug dealer Joyce Akinyi could lose more than Sh60 million investigators believe to be the proceeds of crime.

The huge sum, whose sources are unknown, was deposited in two accounts in the same bank in four years.

On Thursday, Justice Mumbi Ngugi stopped Akinyi from using her two luxury vehicles, a Toyota Crown KCR 5217 and a Toyota DBA-KGC10 KCG 856G. She spent some of the money to buy the cars.

Ngugi ordered that the two high-end vehicles be immediately stationed at the DCI headquarters on Kiambu Road as investigations intensify.

The former wife of deported Nigerian drugs trafficking suspect Anthony Chinedu was given seven days to surrender the logbooks of the two vehicles. 

Judge Ngugi granted the orders after the Assets Recovery Authority said Akinyi did not give a reasonable explanation to prove any legitimate source of the vehicles. 

Akinyi, the owner of the famous Deep West club on Lang'ata Road, Nairobi, and no stranger to drug-dealing charges, is on the radar of the Assets Recovery Agency after investigations unearthed deposits of more than Sh60 million.

In documents filed in court, ARA says Akinyi’s two accounts held at Stanbic Bank were used for suspicious activities, among them money laundering.

She would make deposits in tranches of less than Sh1 million to evade the reporting threshold. The Central Bank of Kenya guidelines require an account holder to declare the source of money if the deposit is more than Sh1 million.

However, before the guidelines were created, Akinyi deposited Sh20 million on November 10, 2015 in one of her Stanbic accounts.  Eight days later, she withdrew Sh7.7 million before making another deposit of Sh67,395 on November 30. Deposits in that account amounted to Sh20,651,981, ARA says.

In her other account at the same bank, Akinyi deposited Sh47,360, 402. The money was deposited in between January 2015 and September 2018.

“Both accounts opened and operated by Akinyi received suspicious huge sums of cash and cheque deposits that indicate activities of money laundering,” the agency says.

Investigators say the funds in the accounts are the proceeds of crime from trade in narcotics.

On July 13 last year, the businesswoman was arrested on suspicion of dealing in narcotics. During the arrest, a search in Deep West Resort yielded 1,050 grammes of heroin. 

The investigating team took an inventory of items seized from Akinyi's room within Deep West. They included an East African passport and Kenyan passport in Akinyi's name, three Congolese passports in the name of Kambere Raha Eveline, Kjambura Marline and Kalla Paulin; a package containing a brownish powdery substance, a digital scale and Ugandan currency. 

The heroin recovered at Deep West was subsequently dispatched to the Government Chemist for sampling, weighing, valuation and analysis to ascertain its nature and content. Akinyi was later charged with the offence of trafficking narcotics.

Akinyi was once married to Nigerian drugs trafficking suspect Anthony Chinedu, who was deported following a presidential directive.  

Akinyi came into the limelight after she was involved in multiple public squabbles with her estranged husband. Chinedu was deported in 2013 after President Uhuru Kenyatta declared war on drug traffickers hiding in Kenya. 

Shortly before he was deported, Chinedu had been charged with being in possession of paraphernalia used in narcotics drug business, including 10 grammes of a suspected illicit drug and weighing scales.