Sh102 Million Money Laundering Case Suspended as Two Women Claim to be College Student Felesta Nyamathira

A Nairobi court has suspended the hearing of a money laundering case against a college student who received Sh102 million from a Belgian national.

This comes after two women appeared in court claiming to be Felesta Nyamathira Njoroge whose account received the money from Belgian man Merc De Mesel, whom she claimed to be her boyfriend.

High Court judge Esther Maina was on Wednesday left in confusion after the two ladies instructed their lawyers to challenge a cash freeze suit filed by the Assets Recovery Agency (ARA).

The judge suspended the hearing for 90 days to allow the two women to appear at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) to determine their real identities.

In November, Justice Maina allowed the agency to freeze the account for 90 days to allow for investigations into a suspected money-laundering scheme.

ARA suspects that Felesta, a 21-year-old student at Nairobi Technical Institute, is part of a money-laundering syndicate involving foreigners. 

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 said in court documents.

The case will be mentioned on May 16th.