Hawker 800XP registration M-VITO: On the evening of December 17, some 30 minutes before Wilson Airport was due to close for the day, a private twin-engine jet with foreign registration touched down from Khartoum, Sudan.
Five people were on board the British-manufactured Hawker 800XP registration M-VITO, according to the Director General of Kenya Civil Aviation Authority, Gilbert Kibe.
“The aircraft arrived at Wilson from Khartoum on December 17, 2018 at 1956hrs with a total of five on board. It departed for JKIA on December 20, 2018 at 1635hrs and later the same day at 1750hrs, it departed JKIA for Ndjamena- Chad with a total of seven on board,” the KCAA boss told the Nation.
CLOSING TIME
Wilson Airport closes at 8.30pm meaning the aircraft arrived, just 34 minutes before the closing time.
Three days later on December 20, the aircraft left Wilson Airport for Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) at 4.35pm.
Slightly more than an hour later, the plane took off for Ndjamena, the capital of the Republic of Chad.
Nothing strange about the plane’s movement except that the particular aircraft is reportedly owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, 57, a shadowy Russian and Kremlin insider with close links to President Vladmir Putin and whose name has prominently featured in the ongoing investigations into the 2016 US election meddling by agents of Moscow.
Mr Prigozhin, a secretive businessman known as Putin’s cook/chef for his Kremlin catering work, was sanctioned by the US in 2016 and indicted in 2018 by Special Counsel Robert Muller who is investigating the Russian interference in the 2016 US elections.
According to a European Union monitoring site for aircraft operators, M-VITO is Mr Prigozhin’s private plane but owned by Beratex Group Ltd, a Russian company.