Raila trying to protect his petroleum businesses Jubilee

The Jubilee administration now says the opposition Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) leader, Raila Odinga, has no moral authority to comment on matters of petroleum accusing him of having vested interest in the same.

Jubilee legislators, Ndung’u Gethenji (Tetu), Johnson Sakaja (Nominated), Beatrice Elachi (Nominated), Rachel Shebesh (Nairobi Woman Rep) and Cecily Mbarire (Runyenjes), while responding to Odinga’s claims that President Uhuru Kenyatta was not justified to decline to assent to the Petroleum Bill 2016, said that the CORD leader was only interested in enriching himself through his companies.

“Raila has no credibility left when it comes to the discussion of oil or petroleum matters in Kenya. That is why we are unable to take seriously his criticisms of the proposed amendments to the Petroleum Bill,” said the MPs in a statement.

“Kenyans will recall that Raila Odinga was closely associated with a firm named Triton International, which unlawfully acquired large quantities of petroleum, and then sold them in, costing Kenyans an estimated 7.6 billion shillings,” they alleged.

“To this day, the scandal remains unresolved, and Mr Odinga is certainly a person of interest for all those who wish to discover how Kenyans were defrauded of such vast sums of public money.”

They are also accusing Odinga of acquiring ‘unusual business partners’ during his tenure as Energy Cabinet Minister.

“It has been reliably reported that a firm by the name Energem is a shareholder in Mr Odinga’s Spectre International, and that some of the directors of Energem are directly connected to an investor who has been credibly accused of acquiring a substantial proportion of Guinea’s mineral resources by corrupt means.”

They said that Odinga’s criticism of the Head of State’s action to decline to assent to the Petroleum Bill, 2016 could be informed by these interests that he wants to protect.

“It may be – and here we are only speculating – that what has driven him to criticism is a combination of interests: he has involvements in the oil and petroleum business to keep safe, and he has a presidential campaign to run in 2017.”