Following an exclusive audit/ investigate report by Kagirison research, Safaricom as a brand has bern left rambling for its dear life worst of all after the author declined their request for bribe to bring down the publication.
In the report, Gathura had skewed the procurement and tender awarding process to favor a select group of companies, which had been onboarded onto Safaricom’s supplier network. There are also allegations of employee intimidation, unprocedural hiring of new employees, and unprocedural promotion of employees in the company.
Other allegations are that Gathura influenced the termination of 7 employees in the procurement department, as well as ensured that tenders were awarded to companies that are controlled by politically well-connected individuals from Murang’a county.
In a recent data leak that made public access to company information on search unravelled alot of mysteries and unmasked alot of individuals owning tens and hundreds of companies directly and indirectly( sharing same secretaries, address, contact)
Another important piece of information provided by this data set is the extent of layering in the companies of interest and so far any of these companies issuing bearer shares (the equity equivalent of bearer bonds). Issuance of bearer shares by a company is a sure sign that some of its owners want to remain unknown, and this raises the obvious question: why do they want to hide their identities?
Layering is the process by which a company owns another company. In multi-jurisdictional layering, the owned company and its owner (company) are registered in different countries. This form of layering is not universally illegal as it provides an avenue for a company to access financing from foreign financiers, among other legal, reputational, and financial benefits.
For example, Peter Waititu Ndegwa is one of the directors of Circle Gas Limited, which was incorporated in the United Kingdom (UK) on September 26, 2018 as a private limited company whose company number is 11588906. Circle Gas Limited was previously known as Safarigas Limited. Circle Gas Limited is hosted in the same address as CircleTech Limited which was incorporated in the UK on May 20, 2019 as a private limited company whose company number is 12004360.
CircleTech Limited was previously known as Kopa Tech Limited. With this information, one can easily guess that these two companies must have (or had) operations in Kenya. Both Circle Gas Limited and CircleTech Limited are associated with M-Gas – a product powered by Safaricom Group. By being registered in the UK, Circle Gas and CircleTech allow M-Gas to benefit for European equity and debt financing, while accessing high-quality European technology for the product that it offers Kenyans. This way, the Kenyan customer benefits from this arrangement.
Another, Pavicon Kenya Limited owns Pavicon Technologies Limited, and both companies are registered in Kenya. What is unique about this form of layering is that it allows the same beneficial owners to bid for the same contracts as different companies, thus improving their odds of winning the bids, while disadvantaging competitors as they can quote lower prices (as different companies) thus creating the perception that other bidders are expensive.
What is interesting about Pavicon Group is that it is not registered as a company in Kenya as of January 20, 2025. Still, this has not stopped Josephine Kanyi from publicly presenting herself as the CEO of Pavicon Group for months, even inviting senior Safaricom employees to visit ongoing projects by “Pavicon Group”. So, Safaricom has been working with an unregistered company which is against its own (company) corporate rules?
What has happened is that the owners of the registered company want it to appear bigger, wealthier, and more capable than it really is. This could be due to the desire to get more tenders and/or more better-paying tenders.
The apparent image of a wealthy and successful company that owns subsidiaries has the quantitative benefit of attracting more businesses (including tenders and contracts) as well as the qualitative advantage of bagging high paying contracts and being in good position to get good terms of debt financing.
Safaricom tenders pay better than tenders the company got previously, such as the tender the registered company got in September 2020 with a government agency.
So, what is the registered company and what tender did it get? The registered company is Pavicon Kenya Limited as explained later. The tender is described hereafter.
On September 23rd, 2020, Pavicon Kenya Limited was awarded a tender worth KES 21,278,869 by the Rural Electrification and Renewable Energy Corporation (REREC). REREC is a government agency that works closely with Kenya Power. For reference, the tender number was 1000000462, and members of the evaluation team were Jonathan Mbutu, Nicholas Muigai, John Otido, and Caroline Kelly. On the same day, this evaluation team also awarded tenders to Bizrate Enterprises and Go Solar Systems. This information is enough to confirm that Pavicon was awarded a tender on the said date by a government agency.
Now, the focus shifts to the company. As mentioned earlier, Pavicon Group was not registered at the time the report was first published. The company that had been confirmed to be registered is Pavicon Kenya Limited which was duly-registered in 2011 with the registration number CPR/2011/52865 and company PIN P051363817W. Pavicon Kenya Limited (or Pavicon (K) Limited) has two listed directors and two corporate secretaries. The directors are Joel Kanyi Kimani and Josephine Njeri Ngugi. Josephine Njeri Ngugi is the majority shareholder with 700 shares, while Joel has 300 shares. The two corporate secretaries are Charles N. Njenga and Emily Nafula Nyogesa.
Apart from Pavicon (K) Limited, Joel Kanyi is registered as the owner of two other companies – Pabit Enterprises and Fufu Enterprises– as well as the director of two companies – Prunes Plastic Limited and Expedition Motors Limited. For Josephine Njeri, she is listed as the owner of Robinia Enterprises and Aqualet Enterprises, as well as the director of Espin Limited and Pavicon Technologies Limited (which was mentioned earlier in this post).
Stay tuned for part 2.
KenyanHour 