High Court Judge, Lady Justice Esther Maina on Tuesday, February 14, ordered the state to give back Ksh157 million that was seized from a Dutch businessman.
The government lost the two-year-old court battle after the prosecution failed to link the money to an international fake gold racket.
In her ruling, Justice Maina asked Asset Recovery Agency (ARA) to begin the process of returning the money to the rightful owner, a Dutch businessman identified as Bernhard Ten Brinke.
Brinke lost the money after the ARA filed a case, claiming that a group of businessmen including him had received more than Ksh728 million in suspicious gold deals.
According to ARA, the suspected gold trade was conducted between May 2019 and January 2021 when the authority seized the money from a Kenyan, a Cameroonian, two Zambians, and their three companies.
ARA accused businessmen in the case and their companies of posing as gold traders yet they were fraudsters.
In a petition that was presented to the court, ARA argued that the suspects falsified custom declaration forms from the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) to facilitate the transfer of money to their personal bank accounts.
The businessmen ran three companies, Mubadala Merchants Limited, First Cargo Logistics, and First Line Capital Limited which conducted business in Kenya and other countries.
However, Brinke refuted the claims and noted that he was an honest businessman who in December 2020, struck a deal with a Kenyan company Global Freight Management Limited to buy 500kg gold at a cost of Ksh2.1 billion.
Elsewhere, on February 6, 2023, officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI) arrested suspects behind the Ksh67 million gold scam.
In the operation, the officers recovered firearms and over 470 rounds of ammunition in a case in which two Americans were defrauded Ksh67 million.
The eight Kenyans were arrested at Nairobi’s upmarket Kitusuru and Kilimani suburbs where they planning their next move.
