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’.