Detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) are camping at the Business Registration Service (BRS) investigating circumstances under which individuals have lost directorship and shareholding in companies through forgery of documents.
Detectives from the DCI privy to the investigations told the People Daily that the multibillion syndicate is undertaken by some unscrupulous employees at the BRS.
Last month, the DCI detectives were forced to acquire a warrant of arrest of BRS Director General Kenneth Gathuma to compel him to surrender documents related to the fraudulent activities at the state owned agency that has seen several business people defrauded of shares worth hundreds of millions of shillings in companies.
In some instances, the unscrupulous individuals, after using forged documents from BRS, have gone ahead to fraudulently change ownership of companies, before subsequently disposing off property worth hundreds of millions of shillings owned by the firms.
Employees complicit
“We decided to move in after an outcry from several business people over the fraud going on at BRS where we suspect a number of employees to be complicit,” a senior detective at the DCI’s Serious Crime Unit involved in the operation told the People Daily.
Early last year, city businessman Josiah Nicholas Mbathi Mwangi appeared in court charged with forging documents to kick out his co-directors from their company, Nimba Technologies that deals in importation of surveillance and security products.
Appearing before Milimani law court senior principal magistrate Bernard Ochoi, Mwangi faced five counts of forgery, with the first indicating that he had forged an affidavit purporting it to be genuine and sworn by his co-director Njeri Kinuthia,
The businessman further denied forging minutes of a meeting, purporting it to be genuine and counter-signed by Njeri. He was also accused of forging company shares transfer deed form and company resignation claiming both as genuine, and were prepared and signed by Njeri.
Detectives now say that individuals like Mwangi, present such forged documents to their collaborators at BRS, where the change of directorship or shareholding is hastened .
The fraudsters are so meticulous in their modus operandi that they are able to file annual returns at the BRS for years without the conned persons discovering them.
