A Kenyan firm is in the middle of allegedly defrauding a Ukrainian national of millions of money in a fake gold scam.
The Ukrainian national, Kovalenko Hennadii's woes are said to have started when he was introduced to a company based in Westlands to ship his gold from Dubai.
In October 2016, he and an acquaintance went to Kampala, Uganda and were introduced to a gold dealer from the Democratic Republic in Congo.
According to The Standard, the gold dealer would provide 350kg gold neggets at a price of Ksh 3,088,500 for every kilogramme of gold.
“In November we flew to Dubai, when we arrived we didn’t find the ‘consignment’. I returned to Uganda,” he stated.
Shipping of the consignment failed even after Hennadii had spent money to get a non-criminal certificate in Uganda and authorisations from DRC and Belgium.
It is at this point that the dealer suggested that he ships the gold through Kenya, claiming it was an honest country and it would be easier to ship the gold from there.
“On January 19, 2018, he brought me to a company based in Westlands, where he introduced me to two managers. They said the firm had licence to export gold and they could make all the documents for shipping to Dubai,” he narrated.
Hennadii highlighted that he even saw the consignment at their offices and it was taken for testing at the Institute of Minerals .
“It was genuine gold,” Hennadii noted.
He added that an invoice of Ksh 59,132,500 was drafted but he had no money at the time, hence, traveled back to Ukraine to look for an investor.
He later came back in Nairobi with the investor, Vladimir Bodnarchuk and signed a contract with the company the next day.
“We fulfilled our obligations. I transferred Sh30,001,500 ($300,015) through a local bank and gave them Sh29,131,000 ($291,310) in cash,” he continued.
Later, they met with one of the managers of the Kenyan firm and an agreement was made that the gold would be shipped in three days after he was paid Ksh 13,600,000.
“But after about one week he failed to ship the consignment and said he needed additional Sh20,000,000 ($200000),” he divulged.
A team of detectives raided the firm and arrested some of the workers after Hennadii reported the matter at the DCI headquarters.
The case is still ongoing at the Milimani court.
