Garissa chief arrested for extorting money from refugees

A Garissa-based chief has been arrested for extorting money from refugees.

The Ethics and Anti-corruption Commission (EACC) says Abdirahman Shafe Yussuf, the Chief of Bulla Mzuri location in Garissa County, had been extorting money from refugees seeking services from his office.

Abdirahman was apprehended after an operation by officers from the EACC Garissa regional office on Thursday. The anti-corruption officers were acting on tip-offs from victims after multiple complaints were made at their office.

Chief charged for services

The chief has reportedly been charging Ksh3,000 for consultation and a further Ksh10,000 in facilitation fees in the ongoing UNHCR deregistration exercise, despite the fact that the service is free.

All service seekers were required to pay the unlawful charges to the chief’s accomplice operating from a motor vehicle of registration number KCY 656W (white Toyota Probox) parked outside the vetting hall before being processed for the service.

Officers from the commission recovered Ksh139,000 believed to be part of the day’s collection and a list of 85 double-registered applicants indicating the amount paid by each. 

The suspect was processed at EACC Garissa regional office and freed on a police bond pending the finalization of the probe.

Deregistration in Northern Kenya

A prolonged drought in the 1990s that almost wiped out entire herds of livestock in the Northern part of Kenya drove tens of thousands of Kenyans to register as refugees for the possibility of receiving relief food, education, shelter, and health care offered by the UNHCR to refugees from neighbouring Somalia.

Over 40,000 Kenyans, the majority of them teenagers, who found themselves in the UN’s refugee agency could not secure Kenya’s citizenship documentation. This meant they could not access any government services, travel or participate in the economy in any way.

The government successfully issued identity cards to over 12,000 people in January 2022 after a much-publicized screening process in 2019.

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