This archive report was first published on 27 December 2019.
On Christmas Eve, police officers in Nakuru smashed a ring of Chinese nationals who were illegally assembling gaming machines in a rented house in a posh estate. The five suspects, aged between 30 and 51, had arrived in Kenya early this month with a one-month visa permit.
However, the machines they were assembling had already been cleared at the port of Mombasa, sparking a probe by the Director of Criminal Investigations (DCI), George Kinoti. The DCI has put officials of the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) on its radar, with Kinoti assuring Kenyans that detectives will investigate how the machines were cleared.
"We don't know how the machines landed in Nakuru after clearance in Mombasa because gambling is banned in Kenya," said a senior police officer in Nakuru Town.
Kinoti has also linked the KPA to several other scandals, including a Sh2.7 billion tender scandal and the theft of public funds amounting to billions of shillings. The port has been on the spot for mysterious disappearance of containers, smuggling of top of the range vehicles from the European market, and tax invasion scandals.
