Pubdate: Thu, 30 Dec 2004
Source: East African Standard, The (Kenya)
Copyright: 2004 The East African Standard
Contact:  http://www.eastandard.net/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1743
Author: John Haroun Mwau
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

COCAINE: MINISTER'S HOUSE IS SEARCHED

Nairobi

The house of a Cabinet minister has been searched by detectives 
investigating the Sh6.3 billion cocaine haul, police sources claimed yesterday.

The sources said the upcountry house was searched after detectives found 
the registration number of the land on which it is built among documents on 
transactions done by Central Valley Supplies Limited.

The firm, owned by David Mugo Kiragu, Davis Alexander Gachago and George 
Stanley Wango - all who have been charged with trafficking in cocaine - 
imported the motorboat in which the drugs were allegedly found in Malindi.

Detectives, led by Mr G. Kimilu, checked the location of the plot at the 
Ministry of Lands and a team was thereafter sent upcountry to search the 
house, the sources said.

On arrival, the detectives were surprised to find the house under armed 
guard by Administration Police officers and on learning the owner was a 
cabinet minister they called their superiors in Nairobi for further 
instructions, according to the sources.

The sources added that the detectives were ordered to go ahead with the 
search. Neither the minister nor his family members were in the house at 
the time. Nothing of interest to the investigators was found, the sources 
added.

Police sources said that Dutch police have given their Kenyan counterparts 
a list of 200 telephone numbers of people said to have been communicating 
with Mr George Kiragu, the suspected drug dealer being held in the 
Netherlands. Among the phone numbers on the list are that of another 
Cabinet minister, an assistant minister and an MP as well as other 
prominent people. Detectives said they are studying the list to establish 
who Kiragu was in regular contact with in Kenya and why.

Meanwhile, businessman-cum-politician John Haroun Mwau yesterday threatened 
newspapers and their editors with criminal and civil charges for allegedly 
"publishing articles that are false, malicious, defamatory and libelous".

He said he had filed "a new criminal complaint" against newspapers and 
editors over "recent defamatory articles published specifically to suggest 
and or insinuate that I am involved in premises, which may be under 
investigation for drugs".

Mwau said he had gone to CID headquarters to ask whether the CID were the 
source of the "malicious and defamatory articles" and that he had allegedly 
been assured that "no premises owned and or associated with me is under 
investigation for any offence whatsoever".

There are, however, conflicting versions of why the politician, who was 
impeached by a tribunal as director of the former Kenya Anti-Corruption 
Authority, went to see the Director of Criminal of Investigations at the 
CID headquarters in Milimani.

He drove himself to the CID offices at 10am and was driven out by his 
driver, who came in a taxi, at 1.15pm.

An aide, who declined to be named, said the businessman, had gone to 
inquire about one of his employees who was arrested on Wednesday.

Mr Bobby Macharia, the managing director of Pepe Inland Container Depot in 
Athi River was taken in for questioning and is being held at Kilimani 
Police Station, Nairobi, according to police.

Mwau is driven out of CID Headquarters, Nairobi, yesterday.

He was first summoned to CID headquarters to assist detectives identify the 
clearing agent for a certain consignment of goods, according to sources 
close to the investigations, before being locked up. Early this month, 
police visited the Pepe depot in search of containers suspected to have 
been cleared together with the one in which cocaine with an estimated 
street value of Sh5.3 billion was found.

The cocaine was seized in a warehouse in Embakasi, Nairobi, and at an 
upmarket Malindi home.

Detectives are still searching for four containers, which were cleared 
alongside the one that brought in the high-grade cocaine from Colombia.

Yesterday, journalists temporarily blocked Mwau's Range Rover at the gates 
of CID headquarters as they jostled to take his picture.

The tinted windows of the expensive vehicle were closed and Mwau was driven 
off at high speed.

"I have talked to him and he says he went there to see Macharia," an aide 
had earlier claimed.

Mwau later faxed his statement to newsrooms saying he had gone to file a 
criminal complaint. "The purpose of this notice is therefore to caution all 
media houses, broadcasting houses and publishers that while I await for 
police action, any publication of vilifying lies, such defamatory, 
libellous, malicious and injurious articles will be strongly protested and 
I shall not hesitate to institute court proceedings without further 
reference to you," he said.
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