How Ruto’s first Cabinet meeting birthed questionable edible oil deal
President William Ruto ’s first-ever Cabinet meeting passed a resolution that gave blessings to an importation deal that has seen private firms import oil tax-free, then sell the commodity to a government agency at a higher price, an NTV investigation has revealed.
Documents in our possession show how companies associated with insiders of Dr Ruto were single-sourced to procure oil for the Kenya National Trading Corporation (KNTC) in a series of tricks where Kenyans stand to lose at least Sh6 billion.
Taxpayers, analysis shows, could lose another Sh10 billion in unlawful tax exemptions related to oil imports. The simple anatomy of the scheme is: A need is created to import oil tax-free. Then somehow, private firms get to import the oil, rather than have a government agency do that.
Those firms then sell the imports to the government agency. The agency then sells that oil through other private firms. Eventually, that imported oil is sold for more than the price of locally manufactured ones. Throughout these movements, massive wastage of cash happens.
Now, dozens of documents in our possession can now confirm that both the National Treasury and Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) applied the wrong provisions of the law to approve the imports.
We have obtained a circular from Treasury Cabinet Secretary Njuguna Ndung’u to the KRA that approved the duty-free importation. It was copied to Mr Kuria and Mr Linturi.
That, and an internal memo by KRA, are misleading by citing section 114 (2) of the East African Community Customs Management Act, 2004, and paragraph 20 (b) of the fifth schedule of the Act for the approvals.
The Treasury circular states in part: “In view of the above, the Cabinet Secretary, the National Treasury and Economic Planning on January 20, 2023, approved the duty-free importation of the above-mentioned products by KNTC in line with paragraph 20 of part (b) of the fifth schedule of the East Afri-can Community Customs Management Act.”
