Fresh details emerged about the Kenyan jailed in the United States for hacking and stealing Ksh434 million from the American Federal Government.
According to new submissions presented by the Asset Recovery Agency (ARA), Sila Jeffrey Ndungi did not commit the complex money-laundering scheme alone.
ARA argued that Ndungi only received half of the money from the Ksh200 million which he wired to his different accounts.
The agency is looking to solve the puzzle of where more than Ksh180 million is, as it is yet to be accounted for because his bank accounts so far have only Ksh20 million.
In fresh submissions before Justice Wakiaga, ARA wants to force Ndungi to forfeit at least Ksh2.4 million held in three different accounts. They also want the investigative authorities to find other people who are believed to have helped Ndungi execute the heist.
"Preliminary investigations established that the funds are proceeds of crime. The respondent engaged in a complex money-laundering scheme whose intent was to conceal or disguise the nature, source, location, disposition or movement (of the) funds," ARA stated in Court on Wednesday, July 28.
The money-laundering scheme was unearthed in 2016 by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the US. Investigations revealed that Ndungi was running the scheme in Kenya and suspected one Lydia Breaux of acting as a stateside operative.
Breaux who acted as a whistleblower confided to an undercover agent that Ndungi had entered the US from Kenya with a large tax refund cheque which was in cash.
The undercover agent posed as a client purchasing the cheque at Ksh4.8 million. The deal further exposed Ndungi for running a separate syndicate in the US of printing fake driving licenses.
From the case proceedings, it was established that Ndungi illegally obtained the cash by presenting a cheque to the United States Department of Treasury for which its tax returns were filled in Kenya.
Ndungi was arrested and charged with two counts of theft of public funds based on two fraudulent tax refunds. He was slapped with a 10-year jail term but appealed the ruling.
Justices Patrick Higginbotham, Jenniffer Elrod and Catharina Haynes in December 2020 ruled that the Ndungi was wrongly convicted by the Northern Texas jury.
