Court Declines to Order Release of over Sh100 Million Seized from Nigerian at JKIA

A Nairobi court has dismissed an application by a Nigerian national seeking to recover over Sh100 million seized from him by Kenyan authorities.

Mauzu Bala was found with 880,000 US Dollars, 60,000 Euros and 63,000 Nigerian Naira stashed in his briefcase at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) on December 5th. He was headed to Dubai, the United Arab Emirates from Lagos, Nigeria.

The court ordered Kenya Airways CEO Allan Kilavuka to hand over the cash to the Assets Recovery Agency (ARA) pending investigations into an alleged money-laundering scheme.

This came after ARA filed an application seeking to seize and preserve the money, saying it has reasons to believe the cash was proceeds of crime obtained from a complex international money-laundering scheme.

Bala who is accused of failing to declare and show proof of the source of the money later moved to court seeking to have the orders directing the preservation of the money set aside.

In documents filed in court, Bala said he had declared the money back in Lagos and was cleared by customs officials.

He accused ARA of failing to make full disclosure to the court when the order was issued, saying the information given by the authority was not accurate and was intentionally meant to mislead the court.

“I pray that the orders granted be set aside and the court replaces the same with an order directing the money in question be released,” Bala said.

He added that he was not charged with any offense since he did not break any law.

In a ruling on Monday, High Court Justice James Wakiaga indicated that ARA is not required to prove any predicate offense to succeed at the forfeiture stage. 

He noted that the agency only needs to prove that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the money in question is proceeds of crime or is to be used in criminal activity.

“The proceedings before court are to determine the criminal origins of the property in issue and are not a criminal prosecution against the agency where the presumption of innocence is applicable,” he said.