A SELF-PROCLAIMED Kenyan traditional leader who presented President Robert Mugabe with slain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s royal gown last year, Paul Kamlesh Pattni, is being probed by the Kenyan government over a litany of fraudulent deals he allegedly entered into during the era of former President Daniel arap Moi. REPORT BY EVERSON MUSHAVA CHIEF REPORTER
Pattni, who anointed Mugabe as “Chief of Africa” when he presented him with the Gaddafi gown, is reportedly entangled in a messy fight with the Kenyan Aviation Authority (KAA) over several duty-free shops that he claims belong to him.
According to the Daily Nation, a Kenyan newspaper, the country risks losing large sums of money if Pattni manages to seize the KAA properties.
“The disgraced tycoon claims ownership of all duty-free shops at the country’s airports even as the bank linked to him demands billions (of dollars) from the Central Bank (of Kenya),” the newspaper said.
Pattni, according to the paper, the man who stole more than 100 billion Kenyan shillings (US$1,25 billion) from Kenyans in the 1990s under the Goldenberg Scandal, is back – now with a “new scheme drawn from the dirty Kanu years to pocket more public funds”.
The move by the alleged con artist would threaten the country’s aviation industry, particularly delay the multi-billion-shilling expansion of the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to make it a regional aviation hub.
He claims all the shops in the new terminal – including those to be built in the future – belong to him, citing a 1991 agreement with the government. The war has also sucked in a judge who is now accused of ruling in undue favour of Pattni. Pattni recently offered to surrender his Grand Regency Hotel (Laico) to the State in return for the dropping of a 5,8 billion shillings criminal charge against him. This was after he conspired to steal 5,8 billion shillings from the general account at the country’s central bank between April 19 and 29, 2003. This is not the first time Mugabe has found himself associated with criminals.
In 2010, Walter Roberto Crespo from Ecuador, South America, visited Mugabe at State House and promised him an honorary doctorate from the Anglican Church of the Province of Ecuador in recognition of 30 years of “outstanding leadership”.
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Crespo – who was in the company of excommunicated Anglican bishop Nolbert Kunonga – described Mugabe as both a political and spiritual leader. Crespo was later reported to be a drug dealer.
It later emerged Crespo was once arrested for allegedly supplying arms to the FARC guerilla movement in Colombia.
