How Ruto's family is benefiting from Saudi slave trade billions

The reports were piling in, one worse than the next. Kenyan maids working in Saudi Arabia had their passports confiscated, wages denied and food withheld. Some were beaten by their bosses for offenses as minor as not knowing how to operate a washing machine. Others were killed.

Instead of demanding that the Saudi government protect these women, President William Ruto pledged to send even more workers to Saudi Arabia, more quickly and less prepared than before. And he instituted policies that made it more profitable for employment companies to do just that.

Ruto, a wealthy politician and businessperson, has cultivated an international image as a Pan-African leader. At the White House last year, President Joe Biden hailed his commitment to improving the lives of the poor. Ruto often invokes his own climb from poverty, vowing to fix an economy that had left so many others behind.

But, a New York Times investigation found, Ruto’s government functions as an arm of a staffing industry that sends poor workers abroad in droves. Politicians started their own employment companies to capitalise on the boom, and the government rolled back worker protections, maximising industry profits.

Even Ruto’s family makes money. His wife and daughter are the largest shareholders of the staffing industry’s major insurance company, records show.

Lots of developing nations send workers to the Persian Gulf. Ruto’s government has built an entire economic policy around it. He proudly notes that remittances are now a bigger share of Kenya’s economy than tea and coffee, historically its most important exports.

Other nations have successfully pressed Saudi Arabia for stronger worker protections and increased wages. Kenya has not. The government has positioned Kenyans as among the cheapest, least-protected workers in the marketplace.

Top officials play down clear evidence of abuse and blame Kenyan women for bringing violence upon themselves. Leading politicians treat any questions about mistreatment as obstacles to Ruto’s economic ambitions.

The government and the industry are so intertwined that employment companies work out of government buildings. Top officials dole out foreign jobs as chits for political allies to give to constituents. A group of maids recently sued the government over their mistreatment, a lawsuit that could be handled by the solicitor general, who owns a staffing company himself.

A government spokesperson owns a staffing company, too. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Ruto’s office referred questions to the Labour Cabinet Secretary Alfred Mutua, who did not address whether conflicts of interest exist. He said Kenya has laws to address that.

Abuse of Kenyans in Saudi Arabia has been documented for years. Women have been beaten, raped, locked indoors and thrown from balconies. Abusers often go unpunished. The Kenyan parliament has debated how better to protect them. But employment companies have persuaded the government to scale back the already scant protections.

“We want to ensure that you do a lot of business, properly and quickly,” Mutua told recruiters at a private meeting last year, according to notes taken by an attendee. “You will have a lot of money.”

Mutua once declared that corruption in the staffing industry contributed to abuse in Saudi Arabia. “We have to break the cartels and streamline the agencies, some of which are owned by prominent Kenyans,” he said in 2022, when he was foreign minister.

Now that he oversees foreign labour, Mutua blames Kenyans for their own abuse, calling them insufficiently submissive. “They have an entitlement and attitude culture,” he told the Times in an interview.

Mutua says that, despite evidence, he is unaware of any politician owning a staffing company.

In fact, records show that roughly 1 in 10 registered staffing companies in Kenya is owned by a current or former official or political figure, many with connections to the ruling party. Lobbyists say that figure is an undercount because so many politicians conceal their ownership.

Kenyan staffing companies make money by recruiting workers and selling their contracts to Saudi agencies, which assign them to jobs.

In Kenya, opening a staffing company requires a licence, so it helps to be in government, said Francis Wahome, chair of the Association of Skilled Migrant Agencies of Kenya, the largest industry group.

“These are the only people who can get it,” he said, “the people who are at good government jobs.”

Wahome said women brought abuse upon themselves by being insufficiently servile. He denied that women had been thrown from buildings. Rather, he said, they try to escape their employers by rappelling from windows using bedsheets — then fall because they misjudge the height.

“You know women,” he said. “They don’t know how to calculate.”

As for why they were locked indoors in the first place: “You close the door for your dog,” he said. “Because it’s your property.”

Parliament proposed stricter rules. Ruto’s government relaxed them.

Hannah Njeri Ngugi, a 36-year-old mother from rural Kenya, had never used electric kitchen appliances before arriving in Saudi Arabia as a housekeeper in 2021. She’d been taught no Arabic, so she could not understand her boss’s instructions.

Frustrated, her employer threatened to beat her. She understood that much, she said.

While she was cleaning house, Ngugi’s cesarean-section incision reopened. When her boss and the Saudi staffing agency denied her care, she had no idea who to call or what her rights were. She returned home for treatment only after activists publicised her case and bought her a plane ticket.

Her supervisor at a Saudi Arabian staffing agency, in an interview, blamed Ngugi for the ordeal, saying she refused to work. Ngugi blamed Kenya’s government for sending her overseas unprepared.

For years, the government had received official reports that workers like Ngugi were being sent to Saudi Arabia without preparation. They did not know their rights, whom to call in an emergency, how to use electric appliances or how to speak basic Arabic.

In 2022, the year that Ngugi returned home, a government watchdog declared that Kenya’s mandatory training programme was insufficient and too easy for recruiters to evade. The report said inadequate training was “an enabling factor for abuse of migrant workers”.

Lawmakers proposed a bill requiring comprehensive training — and mandating jail for recruiters who evaded it. After years of abuse, it seemed like things might change.

But Ruto, then newly elected, had other plans. He had been deputy president for a decade as efforts to increase labour migration took shape. Now he wanted to open the plug.

He announced a deal in late 2023 to send 500,000 workers to Saudi Arabia. His goal, he ultimately said, was to send 1 million workers overseas annually.

Kenyan recruiters stood to make millions. They made about $1,000 (Sh130,000) for every worker sent to Saudi Arabia, industry lobbyists said. But they spent about $200 (Sh26,000) to meet the government’s 26-day training requirement. Additional training would cut into profits.

Lobbyists complained. It helps in negotiations to have politicians in the industry, said Patrick Mburu, a recruiter and a leader of another major industry group.

“They will help us,” Mburu said, “because it is their business.”

Last year, as parliament considered the Labour Bill, a committee report acknowledged that workers were being mistreated. It encouraged the administration to develop a version of the bill that it could support.

Instead, the government withdrew the bill. And Mutua announced that no additional training was necessary. The government even cut the requirement to 14 days or less. It capped training fees at around $100 (Sh13,000) per worker.

In June, amid protests over corruption and unemployment, Ruto said the answer was more foreign jobs. Labour migration, he declared, is “part of nation building.”

Mutua said that political ties to the industry had no bearing on government policy. He said workers were better trained than ever and that the government would send an additional labour attache to help Kenyans in Saudi Arabia.

He cited an innovation: A simulated Saudi home in Kenya, where would-be housekeepers can learn.

Times reporters toured the house six months after it opened. Most of the appliances were in their original packaging and had never been switched on.

Kenya markets its workers as a low-cost option.

Ruto is not simply sending people into high-risk working environments beyond his control. His government has a say in the working conditions for Kenyans in Saudi Arabia.

That’s because Saudi Arabia sets different employment standards for people of different nationalities. The kingdom negotiates with each country individually.

A Filipino live-in maid in Saudi Arabia, for example, makes about $400 (Sh52,000) a month and, in emergencies, can get a rescue team, a safe house and a return home.

The Kenyan government presents its workers as a lower-cost alternative. Live-in Kenyan housekeepers make about $240 (Sh31,000) a month, a figure that Kenya has not renegotiated in seven years.

In cases of abuse, workers are guaranteed nothing. Often, they are shunted between police, their recruiters and the Kenyan Embassy in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Some end up homeless.

“The suggestion that Kenya should ‘push’ other nations misrepresents how international labour diplomacy works,” Mutua said. “No country can compel another to adopt specific terms.”

He said that if Kenya demanded better pay, Saudi employers would turn to cheaper workers. Recruiters worry openly about losing business to Burundi, Ethiopia and Tanzania.

That would be bad for an industry built on volume.

Forbes Global Agencies, for example, advertised 2,100 Saudi jobs in late October. At the going rate, Forbes stood to receive more than $2 million (Sh260 million) for those jobs. Forbes’ co-owner is a member of parliament named Fabian Kyule Muli, an ally of Ruto and a member of his governing coalition.

Ruto’s family has a stake in the industry. Recruiters are required to carry insurance to cover the costs of bringing workers home in emergencies. Mburu, the lobbyist, said that the government steered recruiters to buy policies from a company called Africa Merchant Assurance.

Corporate documents show that Ruto’s wife and daughter are major shareholders, through their company, Africa Merchant Assurance.

“We are not aware of any directive” steering business to Africa Merchant, the company said in a WhatsApp message. Mutua denied that the government sent business to the company.

Africa Merchant has never paid out a company’s claim to rescue a distressed worker, Mburu said. Mutua blamed that on a “technicality” that he was trying to fix.

Africa Merchant says it was unaware of any technicalities and honours every valid, documented claim.

Overseas jobs have become political chits.

With millions of Kenyans underemployed, there’s no better way for politicians to get support than to offer jobs to constituents.

As Labour Cabinet Secretary, Mutua is not merely the industry’s regulator. He allocates jobs to politicians, who in turn dole them out to constituents.

This system helps maintain Ruto’s coalition by rewarding loyal politicians. And it turns politicians into recruiters.

Last year, Senator Gloria Orwoba asked Mutua for a favour: Could he get jobs in the Gulf for some of her constituents? Mutua promised 100 spots, she said.

“If this thing actually went well, I would get elected like that,” Orwoba said in an interview, snapping her fingers.

Mutua selected a recruiter. He even provided an account number for the medical-test fees, she said. Orwoba paid for buses to shuttle constituents to the recruiter.

Mutua said he does not reward politicians with jobs but rather spreads opportunities to different regions.

After long hiring delays, Orwoba grew frustrated. Mutua warned her against criticising the labour policy, she said. But she persisted, accusing Ruto’s government of running a scam.

Eventually, a recruiter filed a complaint against her, and her party expelled her from the Senate.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.