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Son of Kenya’s former President profiting from South Sudan conflict-report

Times of Somalia
Sunday September 22, 2019


The son of former Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi is among a network of profiteers in the ongoing conflict in South Sudan, a report by the U.S based campaign group Sentry has said.

The group founded by the American actor George Clooney which monitors conflicts in Africa said in a report this week Gideon Moi who is currently the Senator of Baringo county in Kenya is linked in a web of companies associated with President Salva Kiir and is profiting from the conflicts in South Sudan.

The report titled “The Taking of South Sudan” says the Kenyan senator jointly with the daughter of President Kirr formed a company to benefit from contracts whose net effect was human displacements and deaths.

“Just two months after the December 2013 massacres in Juba, Conex Energy, a company controlled by Kiir’s daughter Adut, his son-in-law Nardos Ghebeyehu and Akot Lual Arech — a close adviser to the President affiliated with the NSS (National Security Services) — formed the joint venture Caltec Corporation with South Sudan-registered Lukiza Limited,” said the report.

Gideon Moi, an influential senator who is the son of former Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi, has a partial ownership stake in Lukiza, the report adds.

The report claims that members of the Kiir family also own stakes in banks, foreign exchange houses, airlines, oil companies, logistics firms, private security companies and more—often partnering with investors from across the globe.

These business partners hail from more than a dozen countries around the world. There were joint ventures with several high-profile businesspeople and politicians, the report adds.

The report released this week adds: The country’s natural resources have been plundered, lethal militia and military units responsible for atrocities have received financing and kleptocrats have lined their pockets with untold billions of dollars allocated by government programs meant to improve the livelihood of some of the poorest, most vulnerable people in the world.

The report also points fingers at a multinational oil consortium in South Sudan controlled by China National Petroleum Corporation and Malaysia’s state-owned oil company, Petronas, noting that it ‘provided material support to a pro-government militia that went on to commit atrocities, including burning of entire villages, targeting civilians, and an attack on a U.N. protection-of-civilians site’.