Benson Gethi Wangui: Man behind the latest NYS Sh6.2b scandal

A fresh legal battle over a staggering Sh6.2 billion claim has exposed a shocking tale of hypocrisy at the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC).

The dispute centres on pending payments the National Youth Service (NYS) owes suppliers, a matter now thrust back into the spotlight.

In December 2024, the High Court issued an interim order, with Justice Lucy Njuguna barring the payment of the billions to a cluster of companies linked to Benson Gethi Wangui.

EACC argued that these claims for supplies allegedly made to NYS between 2013 and 2016, were entirely fictitious — ghost deliveries of food, fuel and clothing that never happened — and that forged local purchase orders (LPOs), delivery notes, and invoices were used to legitimise the theft of billions.

But documents in our possession reveal EACC is no stranger to this controversial scheme.

Court filings and an October 2020 multi-agency verification report seen by The Standard show EACC was deeply involved in the inter-agency deliberations that scrutinised the NYS pending bills.

The damning report, signed by the EACC’s representative, Evah Wacuka, explicitly recommended the bills be processed, clearing Sh5.374 billion, with only Sh812.1 million flagged for investigation.

In the documents, EACC says it relied on physical verification of vouchers, interviewed NYS suppliers and employees, inspected store records to confirm receipt of goods and store control documents.

Glaring inconsistency

Curiously, after giving the green light, EACC later turned around and moved to court to stop the payments.

This glaring inconsistency is the smoking gun that a team of lawyers led by Cecil Miller for the suppliers is pointing at NYS.

Miller asserts that the EACC, having been an integral part of creating the payment framework and having never withdrawn its endorsement, cannot declare the same framework improper.

And with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) failing to present evidence to block the payout, NYS is now poised to release the billions, exposing deep contradictions within the agency mandated to fight corruption. 

Grand corruption in Kenya always follows a familiar pattern. Millions of public money vanishes. Headlines roar, then fade. But the shadowy architect who orchestrates the scheme often remains elusive.

This is the story of a name, a face, and a fortune: Benson ‘Ben’ Gethi Wangui — the man behind the latest NYS scandal.

Over the past decade, through a maze of court filings, parliamentary testimony, frozen assets, shocking acquittals, and ongoing multi-billion-shilling claims, Gethi has been unmasked as the alleged operational mastermind at the heart of the plunder of NYS.

High stakes

His journey, from a St Mary’s Boys’ School alumnus to a businessman with a Sh3 billion self-declared net worth, charts the blueprint of high-level connections needed to succeed in ‘high-stakes business’ in Kenya.

Gethi was born and raised in Nyeri, and is the firstborn of Charity Wangui Gethi. He is a product of the disciplined Catholic-sponsored school where he sat his KCSE in 2002.

Those who knew him then recall a sharp and ambitious young man.

After school, he entered the world of small-scale construction. But his trajectory was not destined to remain in the dusty fields of construction.

Court documents from the Assets Recovery Agency (ARA) would later suggest a turning point when he was ushered into the lucrative business of major State procurement by unnamed “senior government officials’’.

By his early 30s, Gethi was a married father of one, and the director of companies like Horizon Ltd. He was no longer a ‘hustler’ but a ‘tenderpreneur’ whose methods were first laid bare when the scandal blew.

The year was 2012. The target was the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.

In a scheme that displayed a blatant disregard for procedure, Gethi and his business partner Joyce Makena were accused of forging tender documents from Solarmark Technologies. A contract originally worth Sh105 million was fraudulently altered to read Sh147 million in an attempt to pocket Sh42 million without breaking a sweat.

The court fined them Sh8 million for using forged documents to secure a tender for the supply of lantern lamps to the electoral body.

This 2013 conviction was the first official legal unmasking of Gethi. By 2015, the scheme had evolved into something bigger.

More than Sh1.6 billion was siphoned from the NYS through several companies, most notably those fronted by Josephine Kabura Irungu, a hairdresser-turned-overnight multi-millionaire. So massive was the scandal that it forced the resignation of Devolution Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru, now Kirinyaga Governor, in November 2015.

A year later, in November 2016, a defiant Waiguru appeared before the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee. Fighting for her political survival, she did not just defend herself; she launched a counteroffensive, revealing a detailed map of the conspiracy. At the operational centre of this map, she placed Gethi.

Lone kingpin

Waiguru, however, presented Gethi not as a lone kingpin, but as an agent of more powerful forces.

Her most explosive allegation singled out Farouk Kibet, the powerful and long-serving personal assistant to then Deputy President William Ruto.

Waiguru presented call data records from a Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) file. The logs, she told MPs, revealed a staggering 262 telephone conversations between Gethi and Kibet in the days immediately before and during the fraudulent transfer of billions from NYS coffers.

“She is a puppet of this cartel of Gethi and his operatives who are powerful individuals,” Waiguru said of Kabura, painting her as a front. 

Her testimony went further. She alleged the cartel had set aside Sh200 million specifically to finance a smear campaign and derail investigations.

She also pointed to enormous payments from Gethi’s companies to lawyer Kipchumba Murkomen, now the current Interior Cabinet Secretary, recorded as legal fees.

“The amounts being transferred were too huge to be legal fees,” she said, calculating that for the fees to be legitimate, the underlying case would have to be worth at least Sh3.3 billion.

ARA first major success was securing preservation orders against a portfolio of assets worth Sh585 million, all linked directly or indirectly to Gethi.

This included prime plots of land in Muthaiga, a brand new Range Rover Vogue, and tens of millions sitting in various bank accounts.

In a landmark ruling in February 2021, Lady Justice Mumbi Ngugi ordered Gethi’s’ mother — Charity — and her associate, Samuel Wachenje, to forfeit Sh97.6 million to the State.

Justice Ngugi found the money to be proceeds of crime from the Sh791 million lost in the 2015 NYS scandal.

The judge directed that Charity’s Sh79.6 million in Faulu Bank, Sh7.8 million in Standard Chartered Bank, Sh204,000 at Old Mutual, and Wachenje’s Sh10 million in Family Bank be surrendered to the government.

Separately, ARA filed a suit to permanently confiscate five high-value properties worth Sh291.5 million, including land in Muthaiga North, Rosslyn Estate, Thika, the Eden Times Restaurant in Nairobi, and the millions in Charity’s Faulu account.

Earlier in January 2019, the then Director of Public Prosecutions, Keriako Tobiko, directed that Gethi and 10 others be charged with money laundering, stating he was satisfied the evidence established the offence.

Yet, in a dramatic courtroom twist, Charity had earlier filed a DCI report that contradicted the ARA’s entire narrative.

Supply tender

The DCI findings, in a May 2017 letter, concluded that the wealth was legitimate. It found that Horizon Ltd, owned by Gethi, had been paid Sh245,279,765 by NYS for a legitimate 2014 diesel supply tender, for which services were rendered and taxes paid. Charity claimed she was merely a beneficiary of these legitimate profits.

This claim was ultimately rejected by Justice Ngugi in the forfeiture case, who found her explanation for the source of the Sh97.6 million untenable. 

In May 2021, Gethi broke his silence in a televised interview on KTN. Calm and composed, he offered a completely different portrait of himself. He denied any theft.

“I have audited accounts showing the worth of my company. I did not stumble on the NYS money without doing the job. I participated in a competitive tender,” he stated.

He then made a stunning declaration: he was worth Sh3 billion. His biggest single NYS tender, he said, was for Sh50 million.

“None of my companies is associated with the Sh791 million,” he claimed, positioning himself as a legitimate supplier of fuel and food.

“The courts will bail me out. I am not scared because I am not guilty.” He suggested he was a sacrificial lamb in a witch-hunt by those seeking to “buy freedom.”

But in October 2023. In the criminal case regarding the theft of Sh791 million from NYS, trial magistrate Wendy Micheni acquitted Gethi, former PS Peter Mangiti, and former NYS Director General Nelson Githinji for “lack of evidence” despite the prosecution calling more than 50 witnesses.

Micheni ruled that the State’s case was built on “general information” without being nailed down by concrete documentary or electronic evidence.

“Having failed to establish a prima facie case against the accused persons, I hereby acquit them for lack of evidence,” she declared.

The new Sh6.2 billion scandal presents a fresh legal battle and once again places NYS as a lucrative feeding trough for the corrupt.