MP Rigathi Gachagua Arrested: The Member of Parliament for Mathira Rigathi Gachagua has been arrested. The MP was arrested on Friday morning in Nyeri County.
The arrested followed a write up by UDA communications strategist Dennis Itumbi who announced on his social media platform that the Directorate of Criminal Investigations was planning to arrested Gachagua on Friday. The MP said that he had not been made of why he was arrested.
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It is however expected that Gachagua will be charged with swindling Sh. 12 billion which the DCI has been investigating. Rigathi was first arrested by the DCI last year in August over the multi-billion scandal. The DCI back then said that 22 companies associated with the MP were beneficiaries of the alleged multi-billion scandal in tenders from the national and county governments.
DCI: How Gachagua used 42 companies to swindle, transfer Sh. 12 billion
This arrest came months after the MP’s bank accounts were frozen with detectives seeking to establish the source of the huge sum that passed through his accounts. The frozen accounts contained Sh. 202 Million with one account having Sh. 35 Million another Sh. 165 million and two more with Sh. 1.1 million and Sh. 700,000.
Prior to his latest arrest, Director of Criminal Investigations George Kinoti said that investigations had revealed that Gachagua used up to 40 different companies to transfer billions of money. All the monies he transferred, estimated to be Sh. 12 billion, ended in a company known as Wamunyoro Investments, of which Gachagua and his wife are the sole directors. Kinoti said that the MP had used his companies and proxies to access multi-billion tenders from the government, both local and national.
“While a company known as Upperdeck Agencies won a Sh. 9.4 million tender to supply linen to Nyeri County hospitals, its proprietors were listed, in the bank records, as Gerald Waema Mbatha and Moses Otieno. Detectives later found out that when the money was paid on February 18, 2015, the entire amount was transferred to Wamunyoro Investments Limited, leaving a balance of Sh. 5 only. They also found out that the listed proprietors were not signatories to the bank account. The sole signatory was a Mr Sammy Cheborgey, an employee of Mathira National Government Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF) committee. But Kenya Revenue Authority documents indicate Mr Gachagua is linked to the company,” a report that appeared in a local daily in early July 2021 said.