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Thursday, November 16, 2023 –High-level corruption marred the recent Kenya-Saudi Arabia oil deal that was signed by President William Ruto.
Azimio Principal Raila Odinga, today Thursday November 16, shared a dossier leakage confirming that Kenyan government deliberately entered into a dubious money-making fuel deal with individuals in the guise of Government-to-Government.
”This shady business model is being deployed by all the companies retained in the Ruto deal. They buy at low prices, delay in discharging, then ask to be allowed to offload at higher prices, and the cost is passed to consumers,” Mr. Raila made the claims in Nairobi press briefing.
The Azimio leader has, therefore, accused President Ruto of disguising the deal as a government project to help Kenyan Companies, Gulf Energy, Galana Oil Kenya Ltd, and Oryx Energies Kenya Limited, evade paying the taxes.
”We now know that the characterisation of this deal as G-to-G was meant to shield the three Kenyan companies from paying 30 percent corporate tax,'” the former Prime Minister shared.
According to Raila, the companies contracted in the oil deals bought the product cheaply and sold it at an inflated price to the government of Kenya.
Odinga added that the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum was also alleged to have changed billing months to allow the oil companies to quote higher prices than the market prices hence bending the procurement lawa.
Further, the importing companies delayed the delivery and offloading dates to maximize prices which he termed as inflated. Kenyans, in the end, bore the brunt of the deal as they purchased fuel at exorbitant prices from the market.
Raila also attributed the deal as the main cause of a diplomatic tiff and broken trade agreements with neighbouring landlocked countries such as Uganda. The neighbouring country, which depended on Kenya for fuel imports, recently enacted a law barring Kenyan companies from importing oil on its behalf and, instead, declared direct purchase through Kenyan port of Mombasa.
“The middlemen President Museveni is talking about are Kenyan government officials
”It is shrouded in deep secrecy. To date, only two documents have been made public; that is the Master Framework Agreement with petroleum trading entities and the Open Tender System modified agreement with marketers,” he further stated.
The formula used to nominate the three companies in the oil deal, according to Raila, was also questionable since it was shrouded in secrecy.
”Nobody knows how Gulf Energy, Galana Oil Kenya Ltd, and Oryx Energies Kenya Limited got nominated to handle local logistics. But the hand-picked distributors are selling oil to us,” Raila further claimed, accusing Ruto of this corruption.
The opposition leader, thus, demanded the government revert to an open tender system to give a fair chance to all suppliers and publish the details of the oil deal for public scrutiny.
Early this year, the Kenyan government entered into an import agreement with the governments of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
This deal saw state-owned Oil companies picked to import fuel in what Ruto’s government defended saying will help the shilling to gain strength and stabilize.
