How death and SGR fallout forced Jimi Wanjigi out of the dark power circle

 

For a man who was largely unrecognisable by Kenyans before the 2017 elections despite pulling the strings on major political and government infrastructure deals for three decades, Jimi Wanjigi’s current troubles are a new low for the businessman who was once so mysterious that he was referred to as ‘James Bond.’

Bond, a fictional character created by British novelist Ian Fleming in 1953 has been portrayed in dozens of movies as a larger-than-life personality with the ability to get things done for governments while operating in the shadows.

Before he fell out with retired President Uhuru Kenyatta, Wanjigi who was on Monday summoned to present himself for questioning over the Nane Nane protests by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, the businessman turned politician was Kenya’s version of James Bond.

He was so mythical that media houses claimed he had never been photographed until his friend and controversial businessman Jacob Juma was gunned down under mysterious circumstances in 2016.

“He was a good friend and I stand with good friends and brothers to the end, that’s me! I actually don’t know any other way,” said Wanjigi when the media requested him for an interview after Juma’s funeral before walking away.

Juma’s death, not only thrust Wanjigi into the limelight but it marked a turning point in the businessman’s life pulling him from behind the scenes to becoming a key player in Kenya’s politics and a troublemaker for successive regimes.

Yet, in the years that preceded  Juma’s death, Wanjigi was paradoxically part of the political system that he has spent the last seven years fighting against by lurching to any popular uprising of the time to stand with members of the public.

“I am the one by the way and I say so with a lot of pride who brought the Chinese to Kenya and the first things we supplied to the military were aircraft carriers which the British were supplying at 10 times the cost,” boasted Wanjigi on a Youtuber show two weeks ago.

“That was the start. Then I brought them for infrastructure,” he said.

Today, Kenya is currently spending Sh153 billion per year to pay Chinese infrastructure debt mostly acquired during the Uhuru regime. An attempt by the government to introduce punitive taxes through the Finance Bill 2024 led to widespread protests and the storming of parliament.

Meanwhile, Wanjigi’s run-ins with the government have been so bad that his Muthaiga home has been raided commando style twice in the last seven years by police who have each time said that they had recovered military-grade weapons.

“I don’t think it is the question of police, it is the question of two presidents, former President Uhuru Kenyatta, and the current President William Ruto. What happened in both incidents was criminal activities,” said Wanjigi last week.

“I absolutely think that the Ruto regime wants to kill me. Why say I have grenades? To say I have grenades is saying that I am waging a war using arms,” he claimed.

A son of former long-time Kamukunji MP and Assistant Minister Maina Wanjigi, James Richard Wanjigi was born into wealth and influence. Apart from his wealthy father, Wanjigi’s uncle, Joseph Magari, was the Treasury’s Permanent Secretary during the early years of the Kibaki regime.

Magari was last year acquitted together with former Finance Minister David Mwiraria, former PS Dave Mwangi, David Onyonka, Rashmi Kamani and Deepak Kamani. They were charged with conspiracy to defraud the government of Sh9.5 billion through the Anglo Leasing scandal.

Although the scandal now feels like a faraway tale, it almost brought down President Mwai Kibaki’s government even before it had settled down after getting into power with the promise of dealing with runaway corruption in 2004.

This was after a leaked cable by Wikileaks revealed that a shadowy British firm, Anglo Leasing and Finance Limited (Anglo Leasing) operating from fictitious offices in the UK and Switzerland had secured security-related contracts with the Kenyan government. 

The scam involved a small clique of private-sector dealmakers working together with an equally small cadre of senior government conspirators.  Together, they would generate proposals for large-scale government procurement contracts. 

The contracts involved the requisition of goods not needed or desired by ministries targeted to pay for them, and involved large upfront payments or commissions financed by loans arranged by the businessmen. The goods or services were either vastly overpriced or not supplied at all. 

So bad was the publicity generated by the scandal that the US government banned four individuals from entering its soil; Alfred Getonga, Anura Perera, Deepak Kamani and the then little-known Jimi Wanjigi.

Although Wanjigi’s role in the Anglo Leasing scandal was never elaborated, Wikileaks claimed that his job was to channel contracts, communication and money between Perera, Kamani and government procurement officials. He however later denied any role. “I think the subsequent investigations into Anglo Leasing have come to vindicate me. There’s a part of Anglo Leasing, from what I’ve read in literature, that was paid, after all the hullabaloo and out-of-court battles. Outside this country, contracts that were legitimate were paid, and the ones that were not legitimate are still matters in court, and you don’t see Jimi in court. The agents of Anglo Leasing are having their day in court,” he said in an interview with a local media house.
  In 2008, Wanjigi introduced Du Fei, then chief executive of CRBC Kenya to former Prime Minister Raila Odinga with a plan to build a modern railway through a public-private partnership (PPP).

Wanjigi and Du Fei were good friends. He had been introduced to Wanjigi through his contacts at another Chinese company – Avic, that was in 2007 involved in the supply of assorted heavy commercial machinery to the National Youth Service at Sh55 billion.

Wanjigi’s initial plan was to get a Chinese company to do a Build Operate and Transfer project for the government. In such a transaction, the contractor funds and builds a project then operates it until he gets his money back before handing it over to the owner.

If he got the clearance he needed from Raila, whom he had leaned towards after burning his hands in the Anglo Leasing scandal in the early years of the Kibaki administration, Wanjigi would have pushed the Standard Gauge Railway deal through.

“The intention, when we began, was that the rail was going to be a private one, nothing to do with government. In fact, the government was just supposed to provide the land, which we were prepared to lease. It was like a real estate project,” Wanjigi said in 2019.

The clearance however took too long and was caught up with the Kibaki succession.

Wanjigi, who was by then a mysterious character pushing Kenya’s political direction from behind the curtains through serious State capture initially put his bets on the Interior Minister and longtime friend George Saitoti,who was largely seen as a front runner in the race.

Wanjigi even helped Saitoti set up a presidential campaign secretariat in Westlands, headed by longtime ally and strategist, Prof Peter Kagwanja.

Saitoti however died in a plane crash on June 9, 2012, prematurely ending Wanjigi’s dream of transiting to the new government upon Kibaki’s retirement as the ultimate power broker.

Everyone who was aligned to Saitoti immediately switched their alliances to Uhuru Kenyatta helping him launch the TNA party just days after Saitoti’s death.

By this time Uhuru, Ruto and Kalonzo Musyoka had begun mooting some form of alliance. Unsure on whether they would be legally allowed to run for the presidency due to their ICC cases, Uhuru and Ruto thought of fronting Kalonzo as their flag bearer against the wishes of many bureaucrats in Kibaki’s government.

Things changed midway and Wanjigi took sides with Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto helping to craft the Jubilee coalition deal. Kalonzo was left with no option but to join Raila who was also running for the presidency on a CORD ticket.

“You have managed to fix me twice, you fixed me in 2013 when you brought Uhuru and Ruto and again forced me to support Raila,” Kalonzo revealed about Wanjigi’s role in pushing him out of the Jubilee ticket during a fundraiser in November 2021.

Wanjigi not only brought Uhuru and Ruto together but bankrolled the “Uhuruto” campaign. In exchange, Jubilee put the SGR as part of its promises in its manifesto.

Apart from SGR, the Jubilee administration fast-tracked the settlement of Sh4 billion Anglo Leasing payments, that had remained frozen under the Kibaki administration immediately after taking office. President Kenyatta defended the payments as a necessary international obligation.

Meanwhile, due to pressure from the West which had threatened to shun his government, Uhuru changed the SGR into a key Vision 2030 flagship project.

“In 2013, Uhuru got to power, I don’t know what happened, suddenly this is what the President wants. I told him I wanted to do PPP, the president told me: ‘You must let go,” said Wanjigi in a 2019 interview.

With that decision, Wanjigi lost his stake in the SGR. This sowed the seeds that culminated in a fallout between Wanjigi and Uhuru. 

On December 3, 2013, less than a week after the launch of the SGR construction, retired President Uhuru Kenyatta officiated the ground-breaking ceremony of the Sh55 billion Greenfield terminal project at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).

The new terminal was supposed to increase JKIA’s passenger capacity by an additional 20 million people, making it one of the biggest aviation hubs on the African continent. It would have featured 50 international check-in counters, eight air bridges for docking aircraft, and 45 aircraft parking stands. It would also add another runway to JKIA.

Two Chinese contractors, Anhui Civil Engineering Group and China Aero Technology Engineering International Corp, were tasked with the construction of the 178,000-square-metre terminal that was designed by Pascall and Watson of London.

Behind the scenes of the launch however was a simmering fallout between once close friends, Wanjigi and Uhuru.

This was because after losing the SGR deal, Wanjigi started crafting a team of lawyers including Ahmed Nassir Abdulahi to go to court and stop the railway from being constructed.

A few days after the launch of the construction of the SGR, Wanjigi and Uhuru met during the launch of an autobiography of his father, Maina Wanjigi at the Serena Hotel.

During the event, Uhuru bumped into Ahmednasir Abdullahi, who was among the guests and told him: “Rafiki yangu, vita ni ya nini? Tutafutane tuongee.”

To prevent any noise about the SGR project Uhuru rushed to launch the JKIA Greenfield project within the same week. Like the SGR, the project was also Wanjigi’s brainchild, mooted during Kibaki’s presidency.

The JKIA plan had been set in motion as far back as June 2011 by Transport Minister John Michuki when the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) advertised an international tender for the design and construction of a new terminal; 110 firms expressed interest in the project.

However, when Michuki was transferred to the Environment Ministry and succeeded by Amos Kimunya who had just made a comeback to the government, he ordered KAA to cancel the tender and advertise it afresh.

Following a change in Transport ministers from the late John Michuki to Amos Kimunya, the process was cancelled. The Transport Ministry ordered KAA to have the tender cancelled and instituted afresh.

This directive was ignored and Anhui Construction, a Chinese firm linked to Wanjigi was awarded the tender to begin construction in December 2011. The plan was however put on hold but was re-ignited by Uhuru in 2013.

Anhui was given Sh4 billion as advance payment for the project whose launch ceremony cost an excess of Sh70 million.

In 2016, KAA cancelled construction of the terminal citing prevailing economic circumstances.

Having lost both the Greenfield and SGR deal, Wanjigi completely severed his friendship with Uhuru and cast his dice with the man he had dumped for Kenyatta five years earlier, Raila Odinga.

By supporting Raila, Wanjigi was hoping to replicate the 2013 magic that brought Uhuru and Ruto to power. This time, however, he decided to do it in front of cameras attending political events and rallies.

Raila lost the election and launched fierce protests across the country and even swore himself as president in a mock ceremony at Uhuru Park. The Jubilee government, believing that Wanjigi was bankrolling the protests decided to go after him.

In October 2017, police laid a siege at Wanjigi’s Muthaiga home and recovered seven guns and 600 rounds of ammunition. The firearms included five pistols licensed to Wanjigi, one shotgun and a military-grade M4 assault rifle. During the siege, Wanjigi locked himself in a bunker and was never arrested.

Wanjigi and Raila would later fall out just months after this siege when the opposition leader made a ‘handshake’ deal with Uhuru. Now without Raila or Uhuru in his corner and William Ruto out of the available options, Wanjigi decided to take things head on by himself opposing every government of the day.