Felesta Nyamathira Njoroge, a student at Nairobi Technical Training Institute has fled the country after authorities found Sh102,654,024 in her bank account.
The 21 year old, received the money from a Belgian man identified as De Mesel Marc who she claims is her boyfriend.
According to Njoroge, the money which was split into four transactions was a gift from Marc. However, the Assets Recovery Agency (ARA) suspect it to be proceeds of crime and money laundering.
“There are reasonable grounds to suspect the funds held in account number 02100705531800 held at Co-operative Bank in the name of the respondent, are illicit funds in which the respondent is involved in a money laundering scheme, designed to conceal and disguise the nature, source location and movement of the funds,” they said.
The money, was deposited into the Co-operative Bank account between August 4 to August 6, 2021.
According to ARA, on August 4, Marc deposited Sh25,803,756 into account number 02100705531800 held at Co-operative Bank.
The next day, the man deposited another Sh26,028,156 to the same account before making double deposits of Sh25,242,756 and Sh25,579,356 on August 6.
“Preliminary investigations have established the respondent opened the suspect account for the sole purpose of receiving the said funds which she declared the source to be from “my boyfriend” and the purpose as investing in land projects and safaris,” said the agency in an affidavit.
In an affidavit, De Marc stated that the student was free to use the money however she pleases.
“That I hereby admit that the done will be full and absolute legal owner of the gifted money and even though I hope that she builds financial security for herself and our future children, she will be free to use the said gifted amount as per her own will,” he swore.
The agency says that they summoned Njoroge on October 18 to explain the huge amounts of money but she was a no show.
Two days later, ARA received a letter from Ndindi and Nadida Advocates notifying them that their client was out of the country.
“We would like to inform you that our client, Felesta, is currently not in Kenya and in fact left the country on October 2, 2021….we do not have information on when our client will be coming back to Kenya,” the advocates told ARA.