In mid 2020, Danson Mungatana was charged with conspiracy to defraud a Nairobi businesswoman Sh. 1 million. Mungatana was accused of obtaining Sh. 930,000 from Cynthia Muthoni Kamau by falsifying Local Purchase Orders (LPOs) and letters of acknowledgement for expression of interest for supply of dry food stuff in favour of Beni Trading Company.
This was not the first time that Mungatana, who is currently the Senator for Tana River, was getting caught up in a web of alleged shady businesses and alleged con games.
A few years ago, the former Garsen MP reportedly lost tens of millions of money in a shady oil scheme. Mungatana made these revelations after reports went round that he had been conned by a witch doctor.
“About eight years ago, I lost a lot of money in a fake investment oil scheme that was run by Abdalla Tamba. He [was] later freed in Kenya, which I came to learn when I saw him on TV,” he said last year.
“After the police displayed him in public, I submitted myself as they had asked if anyone who had been conned to report to them.” Danson Mungatana explained the business cost him a lot of money together with other prominent individuals.
“Abdalla and his partner came and told me to invest money so we would buy oil. The first and second round there was profit, but the third round, the foreigners simply disappeared and went with the money till recently when I saw him arrested. The suspects were arrested on September 28 2018,” said Mr Mungatana.
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Mr Mungatana dismissed reports that he had been conned by a witchdoctor who promised to multiply his money to make him an overnight billionaire. “I did not want to be an overnight billionaire as claimed. That is not what my mother taught me. I have been working hard all my life.”
He said he fell prey to an investment scheme which was created by foreigners in cohort with local prominent leaders.
“It was not only me who suffered but there were a lot of prominent people who fell prey to the scheme as it seemed genuine.”
He said the proprietors of the scheme involved in buying and selling of oil appealed to deep-pocketed Kenyans to invest with them on promise of getting huge profits in return.
“We received profit in the first and second rounds, but the third time the proprietors of the scheme disappeared with our money,” said the former assistant minister without revealing the amount he lost.
Back then, it was widely claimed in the media that Mr Danson Mungatana was defrauded a whopping Sh. 76 million. Mr Mungatana though refused to state the exact amount he lost, but said it was a “huge amount of money.”
