Kenyan judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officers, accused of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from the Ibrahim Akasha crime family to frustrate their extradition to the United States to face drug charges, are at risk of indictment and prosecution in the US.
Top officials in Kenyan legal circles are also hoping that the Americans have cracked the drug dealers and that they will provide information on their associates in politics and government.
The prosecution may have agreed to ask presiding Judge Victor Marrero to impose sentences of less than life imprisonment in exchange for forbearing the US the cost of a full jury trial.
It is also possible that the Akashas have accepted to provide prosecutors with incriminating information, such as details of the bribes they are supposed to have paid Kenyan officials.
Prosecutors maintained in court documents that the Akashas had conspired to pay “hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to the judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officials” in Kenya in an attempt to avoid extradition to the US.
Already, politician Stanley Livondo was mentioned in court documents as an associate of a South African described in court papers as a drug dealer.
The Akasha brothers were alleged to have engaged in a dispute in a Mombasa shopping mall in 2014 with Livondo, who is described as an associate of David Armstrong, a South African drug trafficker.
Ibrahim Akasha allegedly threatened Livondo with a pistol during this public altercation in the mall.
The brothers also “helped orchestrate” the murder of another Armstrong associate, a man identified only as “Pinky,” an individual who was shot 32 times in the street in South Africa, according to the statement presented on Thursday.
Any defence mounted by the Akashas’ trial attorneys would likely have been badly damaged by testimony for the prosecution that was expected to be presented by one of their alleged co-conspirators, India national Vijay Giri Anandgiri Goswami.
Described by US prosecutors as the manager of the Akashas’ drug trafficking network, Goswami was indicted in New York along with the brothers.
He supposedly agreed earlier this year, however, to co-operate with prosecutors in building a case against the Akashas.
Lawyers representing the US government would not confirm that Goswami had been “turned” to give evidence against the brothers.
