Wars on Chinese firm Huawei Kenya office intensify – Weekly Citizen

The operations of a Chinese firm, Huawei Kenya, hangs in the balance and its future looks bleak going by a number of petitions to be filed before various parliamentary committees, Weekly Citizen has information.

Already, lawyers have been burning the midnight oil to have a number of petitions filed before the speaker for approval presented before parliamentary floor for members to allow the firm to be investigated on a number of anomalies in its Kenya office.

The initial plot was to have just one petition filed in parliament but the schemers have decided to spread them across various committees to avoid MPs being compromised.

By last week, our investigative team hadinformation that panic had gripped Huawei Kenya office headquarters located in Lavington with CEO Stone Lee under the spotlight.

Apart from Stone Lee, Steve Li is Huawei president in Kenya and is known to frequent Baringo senator Gideon Moi’s upmarket Lord Errol Gourmet restaurant in Runda, Nairobi. Gideon is a major shareholder in Safaricom Limited that does multi-million business deals with Huawei.

The Chinese top staff are said to have discussed current reports unearthing underdeals operations by Huawei in Chinese language in one of the offices.

Our source revealed that at one time, they blamed an employee, a Kenyan of Somali origin of being a mole at the headquarters. By the time of going to the press, information we have is that local Kenyan staff are a marked species even as the issue has landed at Huawei headquarters in China.

The dirty happenings at Huawei in Kenya cut across and that is why when it comes to insecurity, parliamentary committee on security and foreign affairs will handle. Employment matters on grounds of poor pay, working conditions will land before committee on labour and social welfare. Information and technology committee will handle matters relating to its scope.

Then we have plan B if the parliamentary move fails as Huawei is claimed to perfect the art of bribery and lobbying which is against Chinese anti-crime laws and if found guilty leads the firm involved being banned from doing any business deals in China and internationally.

The plan B is to have the lawyers involved in drafting the petition in cooperation with a section of media establishments, NGOs and other interested parties file a private criminal prosecution in the Ecomonic Crime Court to have top Chinese Huawei officials in Kenya subjected to criminal charges. The economic crime charges will relate to economic sabotage, briberies, tax evasions and dumping of poor security communication equipments and mobile handsets.

With Huawei Kenya office operatives boasting to have influence in the current public investments committee whose chair is Mvita MP Abdulswamad Nassir, the petitioners are not taking anything for granted.

Weekly Citizen has landed on key issues to be presented before parliamentary committee on security and foreign affairs as the first petition with others to follow. The committee is chaired by Kiambaa MP Paul Koinange with vice chairperson John Waluke.

Committee members are Didmus Barasa, Speaker Muturi, Geoffrey Kingangi, Arbelle Malimo, Josphat Kabinga, Mbai Nimrod, Theuri George, Wambugu Martin, Deric Ngunjiri, Shurie Abdi Omar, Yussuf Halima, Masara Peter, Mohamed Kolosh, Joshua Aduma, M’mbaya Justus, Gesito Mugali, Kaunya Oku, Wamunyinyi Wafula and Kaluma Peter

The petition revolves on police communication contract that was mysteriously awarded to Safaricom and its Chinese partner Huawei. Senator Gideon Moi influence features and single-sourced contract. The petitions want Huawei to come and explain how effective the CCTV cameras are and the cost.

Initially, the communication system project was valued at Sh45 billion. Before it was single sourced during the tendering process, Huawei quoted Sh15 billion for the same. Huawei rival ZTE won the contract after quoting Sh17 billion. Huawei after losing using powerful political connections, decided to lobby and land the lucrative tender.

It was on this grounds that Safaricom was brought on board when late Bob Collymore was the CEO. The state was to pay Safaricom Sh45 billion and subcontract Huawei at Sh15 billion with Sh30 billion up for grabs.

To be enlisted in the petition, according to documents seen is Communication Authority of Kenya, then previously Communications Commission of Kenya. CAK in 2010 wanted to phase out analogue users of security and emergency services to a digital platform one. By then, the president was Mwai Kibaki.

Documents show that an international tender was advertised with Britain firm Tetra Radio Limited winning. A contract was signed between the Office of the President and Tetra and Attorney-General office being involved.

Smelling money, Huawei using its influence in corridors of power, worked on a move to block Tetra. By the time, the Kenya government had shifting East from West in issues to do with security matters as China was enjoying lucrative tenders.

To block Tetra, the single-sourcing aspect was introduced. The power barons also influenced CCK demand Tetra pay a licence fee of Sh521 million before the licence is awarded.

The contract papers seen by Weekly Citizen being part of the petition show that in the provision tender, a winning tenderer was to get the licence first before payment is made.

Fearing it was meeting hurdles in the process, Tetra moved to the High Court and a ruling was made in Tetra’s favour as being the firm that offered security and emergency communication system tender.

CCK appealed to the Court of Appeal. As the appeal was on, behind the scenes deals were being perfected. A trip by Kibaki to China at the influence of Huawei was planned. Core on the visit plea list was a request for the Chinese government to grant Kenya a loan of Sh10 billion to roll out a security communication system.

Come 2012, players worked on the tender be restricted to Chinese firms and the battle zeroed on Huawei, a private entity and ZTE a state parastatal. Tetra was left nursing economic wounds.

Huawei quoted Sh14 billion and ZTE Sh17 billion for the project.

Huawei business wars later landed in High Court. Tetra local lawyers filed papers in court to be enjoined in the case on the basis of contempt. Lawyers aware of the case say lawyers of ZTE and Huawei convinced the Chinese firms that they were to lose and be jailed hence they moved fast to withdraw the court cases before Judge George Odunga.

The petition papers implicating Huawei in economic crimes to parliament claim that immediately the case was withdrawn, Huawei influenced ZTE managers arrested by police after then Interior CS Joseph ole Lenku signed their deportation orders. Mutea Iringo was permanent secretary. Ole Lenku had replaced the late Joseph Nkaissery as the minister. Sources say the tender was initiated when the late George Saitoti held the powerful Interior docket. Surprisingly, Saitoti who was replaced by Nkaissery died in mysterious circumstances.

A source within ZTE that Weekly Citizen talked to in Uganda office revealed that the managers were humiliated as they were chained together, forced in one car, locked up in a dark container at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for a night and dragged in a waiting Qatar Airways flight to Qatar with briefs never to return to Kenya.

All this time, Huawei managers were seen at the office of the president moving up and down finalising deals. After ZTE was booted out, Tetra were next. The petition that is likely to fix Huawei operation in Kenya reveal that Huawei at one time, tried to bribe Tetra to withdraw the case and pay them all the expenses incurred. To the surprise, Tetra refused to withdraw the case and get compensated. By then, the sensitive Tetra matter was still in court and fear was, if tender was awarded to Huawei, stopping court orders were bound to come up.

With single sourcing of the contract, that was the landing field. But one headache was that Huawei having been involved could not be awarded hence Safaricom factor. Huawei was to supply hardware and software products to Safaricom.

Huawei convinced Safaricom implement 4-G network rollout to its advantage and linked to police security CCTV. Huawei had Safaricom its front as a security emergency as Kenya was experiencing terrorist attacks from left and right.

A brief by Office of the President to national security committee then was that there was a need for digital security system to help the police deal with the emergent terrorist threat was the solution.

Safaricom held a meeting at State House to fine tune the deal with Huawei playing behind the scenes. Uhuru Kenyatta, a buddy of Gideon was to state, the government was launching a new system for the police with CCTV to capture images to help police in the fight against terrorism.

With Uhuru blessings, PS Iringo and Ole Lenku appeared before the parliamentary committee in charge of security to shed light on the project. The issue of Huawei and Safaricom contract arrangement was raised.

MPs in then parliament according to the petitioned we have seen were compromised to favour the project on Safaricom achievements not Huawei and Safaricom had infrastructure across the country. In parliament committee report, the late Bob Collymore was to state, they were fronting Huawei for the project and Safaricom goal was 800MHz 4-G frequency spectrum. The current parliament wants stakeholders and committee members allowed the National Police control centre to evaluate the process undertaken by Huawei and Safaricom and if the installed cameras are working as initially projected.

Another issue that is to feature in another petition to information and communication parliamentary committee is the delay in the roll out of 5G Network awarded by Safaricom to Huawei in suspicious circumstances.

Kenya was among the first countries to do the tests but due to silent wars between Safaricom and Huawei, the project has grounded. Already, ZTE has rolled out the 5G network in Uganda making it the first one in East and Central Africa. Insiders say Huawei and Safaricom are fighting over the police project kickbacks hence the delay in 5G network.

All this is happening as Huawei is fighting America over the 5G network that has seen it being blacklisted in a number of countries as the war on the Chinese firm more so, on matters relating to privacy continues.

In Kenya, human rights activities are planning a demonstrations against Huawei activities in Kenya that will end at its main Lavington headquarters as parliament will be receiving the many petitions being worked on