Meet the Woman Who Carried Millions of Shillings In Bags Without Security Arrangements

Josephine Kabura, a name whose meaning in her local dialect means rain, is indeed making it rain and at one point, sending shivers down the spines of the lowly and the mighty.

Seeing her from a distance would make one mistake her for just an ordinary simple woman. She wears little makeup and she does not wear those cheap horse-hair weaves imported from other countries. She is just simple maybe proving the old saying of simple life but high thinking. Yes, she looks simple but deep within her pockets and bank accounts she is a millionaire, a millionaire who is said to have taken part in violently robbing from the poor National Youth Service youth working to unblock blocked sewage trenches.

Meet Josephine Kabura, the woman at the center of the multimillion NYS scandal. She set off the storm when she released an affidavit that mentioned various people who she said took part in looting the National Youth Service millions. More than 791 million shillings, though the Auditor General indicated that more than that amount may have been looted, is said to have mysteriously disappeared from the fund under the Ministry of Devolution.

Josephine Kabura owned more than 20 companies that benefited from the stolen millions and in her affidavit, she mentioned Anne Waiguru, former Devolution Cabinet Secretary for being the mastermind of the loot. Anne Waiguru, who has since entered politics and is currently planning to vie for the position of Governor in one of the counties in the country, has since relinquished her position as Cabinet Secretary but despite all the fingers pointing in her direction, she still maintains that she stole no cent.

The NYS scandal is as dramatic as the actors who masterminded it. It is said that Josephine Kabura could stage her own arrest in full glare of the media so as to diverge the attention from the ongoing investigation same to the then Devolution Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru who is rumored to have staged the searching of her house by the officials from Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC).

In an inquiry before a parliamentary committee, Public Accounts Committee, on Tuesday, Josephine Kabura dropped another bombshell. In many occasions, she could not explain her dealings with the National Youth Service but what shocked many was that she could withdraw more than 100 million shillings from a bank without any security arrangements. In March, last year, Josephine Kabura withdrew 100 million shillings from a bank without security. When asked how she carried the money, she simply said, I would carry the money in one bag at a time. According to her, one bag would carry between 10 to 20 million shillings and that she used the money to pay the suppliers at the quarry who were working day and night. The weight of 100 million shillings is approximately 100 kilograms or let’s just say two bags of cement.

As young people who were working at the National Youth Service were walking in tattered aprons through the dirty streets of Kibera collecting smelly litter and unlocking blocked sewage passages, someone somewhere was withdrawing and transporting money in new bank notes that has the same weight as the weight of two bags of cement! Anyway, as people say, this is Kenya and anything is possible in Kenya including the President being too frustrated with his corrupt official to the extent of him asking the common man on the street through a national television that what do you want me to do?

According to Ms Kabura, she owns 20 companies that have been trading with NYS and up to date, she had received 1.67 billion shillings from the National Youth Service and what was more shocking was that she has never filed any tax returns.

The NYS fiasco forced the then Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission boss Philip Kinisu to resign because he had also tasted part of the looted cake. Mr. Kinisu’s company is said to have received more than 200 million shillings from its questionable dealings with the NYS. One thing remains clear though, no one has been brought to book and jailed concerning the NYS. Anne Waiguru wants to be Governor, Josephine Kabura is still defending herself, not in court, Ben Gethi is still driving around his top model Range Rover and Kenyans are still paying taxes.

Read: Kenya Loses 50 percent of its Budget to Corruption – PKF East Africa