Richard Ngatia: Chairman for Kenya National Chambers of Commerce and Industry (KNCCI) As detectives continue to dig and search for evidence in their investigations on the Sh63 billion medical kits tender scandal at the Kenya Medical Supplies Agency (KEMSA), social media posts published by the wife to Megascope Healthcare Ltd CEO Richard Ngatia, who has over time been pointed out as one of the key masterminds of the heist, have left many netizens in deep ponder over the effectiveness of our anti-graft agencies.
In what lawmakers say was conceived like a criminal enterprise, a damming report by the Senate on Thursday noted that Megascope Healthcare Ltd was part of the multi-billion rip-off and should be investigated by the Ethics and Anti- Corruption Commission.
According to documents tabled in parliament, since the pandemic broke out in early March, the firm was awarded contracts worth over Sh1 billion.
Interestingly, during this period when Ngatia's company was openly making a killing off fleecing the government and in days following up to the leaking of details on the scam, his exuberant wife Diana, continued to showcase her luxurious and glamorous lifestyle on the interwebs. The rich and Instagram: modern day's inseparable union You see, when Instagram was launched in 2010, it was designed for people to share and show off photos of their lives to friends and followers, but soon the wealthy elite fully took advantage of it as a chance to display their opulence to the masses.
Over time, the platform has become a place for the rich to excel. No matter your tax bracket, Instagram is a place to document a life well-led, which in 2020 translates to money well spent.
No matter their net worth, most Instagrammers are basically the same: weird people obsessed with sharing orchestrated evidence of the big celebrations, long-awaited vacations, and photogenic indulgences that separate long stretches of mundanity.
Diana Ngatia is precisely one of those. Diana Ngatia showing off her expensive accessories In the midst of more than a dozen of boring family TikTok videos in which Richard Ngatia himself often appears, is a recently published video this year where Diana takes her followers into a brief tour of her expansive closet and shows off her costly Louis Vuitton designer handbags with hundreds of other expensive shoes and accessories in the background. Here is KNCCI chairman Richard Ngatias wife enjoying the KEMSA loot and puking on Kenyans. Interestingly, Ngatia was never called to testify in parliament even after he sold Jack Mas donation pic.twitter.com/LsRUQEG9I4 — New Kenyan (@NewKenyan) May 18, 2021 There is no question that the rich love to splurge on designer bags.
After quick research to gather the most affordable bags offered right now by the French fashion label, it's quite clear that no matter what type or size of an original Louis Vuitton bag, they still carry a hefty price tag.
LV’s most affordable bags, for instance, are their classic logo styles which begin to sell from $500 (roughly Sh50,000) to $1,050 (just over Sh100,000).
It is not clear what exact type Diana's bags were, but one would only imagine what the housewife to the man who doubles also up as a well-paid president of the Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KNCCI) would rock in her closet.
This is, perhaps, why many common Kenyans feel that the recently shared videos, just like in many past incidents involving the corrupt rich, were made as a mockery to citizens and the various investigative agencies given they were published at the backdrop of one of the biggest procurement scandals recorded in recent history.
Like we have come to learn as a nation under all three past plunderous regimes, only a protected family can brag in such ways.
Even more frustrating, unlike in other progressive countries, the so-called Kenyan authorities have chosen to remain oblivious to the quickly changing dynamics of the modern world where detectives, like in the recent case of flamboyant Nigerian Instagram star "Hushpuppi", use information extracted from social media to aid them in trailing dirty or corruption money.
In Hushpuppi's case, his Instagram account, which was followed by 2.4 million people at the time, was filled with hundreds of pictures of him posing with luxury cars, designer clothes and private jets.
The posts helped FBI detectives confirm Hushpuppi's true identity, his whereabouts, and to connect him to conversations discussing the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars.
It is common knowledge that many Kenyan politicians (especially governors) fly out popular prostitutes with taxpayers monies.
Even more common, is the fact that basic social engineering can harvest huge chunks of information online accounts of these fraudulent personalities, instead, Kenyan authorities would rather spend time charging bloggers over baseless posts to distract us from their shocking levels of incompetency. Remember Joan Kubai? Joan Kubai: Kenyan teenager who stunned netizens with a virtual tour of her rich parents’ expensive home compound The teenager who in July decided to entertain her viewers on Snapchat with a tour around her parents' multi-billion mansion tucked in somewhere deep in Runda Estate. She took more than 10 minutes to walk around the house as she showed the lift, six bedrooms, four sitting rooms, numerous balconies and lush green compound.
As a result, she drew fresh attention to her corrupt father’s underhand dealings.
According to a Daily Nation publication from December 2019, Joan's parents Peter Macharia Kubai and Isabellah Wairimu Kubai are joint directors of Benisa Limited, a firm at the centre of two separate investigations by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) into Murang’a Governor Mwangi wa Iria’s alleged violation of the public procurement law and ghost projects in the county. Benisa had been hired by the now-bankrupt Italian firm CMC Di Ravenna on May 15, 2015, as a subcontractor to do a number of works on the Itare dam project for Sh360 million.
Even after we highlighted the story of the lady and their expensive house, EACC, DCI and the Asset Recovery Agency, in their usual politically-inspired ways, refused to follow the money trail.
Will Richard Ngatia and his wife's case be any different from the others we have highlighted in the past? Judging from the fruitless, sluggish progress Kenyan detectives have made thus far concerning the whole KEMSA scandal, that remains highly unlikely.
It, however, remains an open chance for the negatively tainted agencies to finally redeem themselves in the eyes of the growingly frustrated public and we at nyakundireport.com hope they grab.