Court Orders Freezing of Sh121 Million Held in a 21-Year-Old Student’s Bank Account

Assets Recovery Agency (ARA) has obtained court orders to freeze Sh121 million held in a bank account belonging to college student Felesta Nyamathira Njoroge.

On Friday, High Court judge Esther Maina allowed the agency to freeze the account for 90 days to allow for investigations into a suspected money-laundering scheme.

“Preservation orders be and are hereby issued prohibiting the respondent, her employees, agents, servants or any other persons acting on their behalf from transacting, withdrawing, transferring or dealing in any manner howsoever in respect of any profits or benefits derived or accrued from the funds specified,” the order reads.

ARA suspects that Felesta, a 21-year-old student at Nairobi Technical Institute, is part of a money-laundering syndicate involving foreigners. She claims to have received the millions as a gift from her Belgian boyfriend Merc De Mesel, who is known to be a Bitcoin investor.

Authorities established that the money was deposited in the account in four transactions between August 4th and August 6th, 2021. The account was opened two days before the huge deposits were made.

On August 4th, Sh25,803,756 was deposited into the account before receiving Sh26,028,156 and Sh25,242,756 in two separate transactions the following day. A further Sh25,579,356 was deposited on August 6th.

ARA summoned Felesta on October 18th to explain the suspicious transactions but she did not show up and instead sent her lawyers, who termed the summons as vague. Two days later, the attorneys informed the agency that their client was out of the country.

“There are reasonable grounds to suspect the funds held in the account at Co-operative Bank in the name of the respondent, are illicit funds in which the respondent is involved in a money-laundering scheme, designed to conceal and disguise the nature, source location, and movement of the funds,” ARA added.