Kamlesh Pattni

Service / Career

In 2022, Kamlesh Pattni had an estimated net worth of 2.1 million US dollars. Includes several cars and real estate - houses and property.
His church made over 64 percent of the net worth and his personal valuation. He is expected to exceed 55 million Kenyan shillings in annual earnings in 2022.
Owner of Goldenberg Company. Is said to have sold gold to the Kenyan government in exchange for over 7 percent (estimated) of the Kenya’s GDP. He was accused of using the money to buy his prestigious Hotel Grand Regency. He was later acquainted. ^[1]
Pattni is the chairman of the Kenya National Democratic Alliance (KENDA), a political party. He was a parliamentary candidate at the 2007 elections. He unsuccessfully contested the Westlands Constituency in the 2013 election and received 10 083 votes.

Events

In 2012, he was awarded the Lifetime Africa Achievement Prize for Humanitarianism and Equity by the Ghanaian Excellence Awards Foundation. Pattni was honoured together with Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. The Late President John Evans Atta Mills of Ghana was also posthumously honoured at the ceremony alongside Mohammed Mo Ibrahim, Egyptian opposition leader Mohammed El Baradei, Nigerian politician, Godswil Akpabio , Kaumbi Chapwe, businessman Aliko Dangote, daughter of former Angolan president, Isabel Dos Santos and Noo Letele. The founder and President of the Foundation is Ashim Morton. ^[2]

Goldenberg scam

This involved the Kenyan government subsidising exports of gold during the 1990s (between 1991 and 1993), by paying the company Goldenberg International 35 percent. The normal incentive was 20 per cent incentive. While it notionally appeared that the scheme was intended to earn hard currency for the country, it was estimated to have cost Kenya the equivalent of more than 10 percent of the country's annual gross domestic product, or $600mn, and it was possible that no or minimal amounts of gold were actually exported. It led to charges of corruption against many members of then President Daniel Arap Moi’s government. Officials in the former government of Mwai Kibaki were also implicated. ^[3]

Kenya had no significant gold deposits.

In April 2013, the High Court acquitted him over the Goldenberg scandal.

The Goldenberg scam, was a gold smuggling operation that reportedly robbed Kenya of $600 million and led to charges of corruption against many members of then-President Daniel Arap Moi’s government. After years of prosecution, Pattni was acquitted.

Since the 1990s, Pattni cultivated close ties with several leaders all over Africa, and was quick to boast of that proximity while speaking with Al Jazeera’s reporters. He showed the undercover reporters photos of himself with former Libyan President Muammar Gadaffi, former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and ex-Kenyan presidents Daniel Arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki. His rise to power started in his home country Kenya — at a tailor’s shop in Nairobi.

His company-Goldenberg International was granted an exclusive licence to export Kenyan gold, but instead, he allegedly smuggled gold from DR Congo. ^[4]

Reported Asset Freeze

In April 2023, people named in the Gold Mafia documentary had their assets frozen by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, according to “inside sources at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe”. They include Uebert Angel, Ewan McMillan, Kamlesh Pattni, and Simon Rudland. They are to be frozen until the Financial Intelligence Unit has finished its investigations.

Earlier, according to a memo seen, the FIU directed that the assets of Cleopas Chidodo, David Chirozvi, Mehlululi Dube, and Fredrick Kunaka be frozen.

^[5]

Further Reading

References