Artur brothers, raid on media: Scandals during Kibaki’s tenure
The Artur brothers. They were implicated in the raid on the Standard Media Group.
Soft-spoken and unassuming, President Mwai Kibaki was known as a brilliant and gentlemanly economist.
But behind that veneer of meekness, a litany of controversies and drama plagued his 10-year reign from 2002 to 2013.
From Artur brothers’ saga, being sworn-in at dusk to the raid at Standard newspapers. His presidency began on December 31, 2002, raising hopes for Kenyans but soon rather than latter, Kenyans started to see the warning signs that things were going wrong.
And it did not take long. In December 2005, two Armenian blood brothers – Artur Margaryan and Artur Sargsyan – landed in the country with an unclear agenda.
Also Read: The battles that defined Kibaki presidency
They would be introduced as prospective investors and hurriedly issued with Kenyan passports and work permits at the behest of powerful government officials.
Rather than be the investors they were supposed to be, the Artur brothers would be treated as high-ranking government officials. They were secretly allocated senior positions in the police force, ranked as high deputy commissioner of police, and issued with security passes to access VIP zones at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), going as far as even holding a press conference there.
Two months later, that is mid-February 2006, the two brothers would begin engaging in suspicious activities, setting in motion an eventful six months stay in Kenya.
Undeterred, they would continue leading flashy lifestyles with the swanky Runda estate being their home as they enjoyed government protection.
Unruly, operating as untouchables and a law unto themselves, Mr Margaryan would even go as far as daring the then police commissioner Major Hussein Ali to arrest them.
On March 2, 2006, they swung into action assisting in the raid on Standard Group offices at I&M Towers where equipment was vandalised paralysing operations in the process.
The operation was linked to reports that the then First Lady Lucy Kibaki had gotten wind that the newspaper was planning to splash a story on the president’s two wives.
At the Standard Group’s Likoni Road printing press, they carted away newspapers never to be recovered to date.
A former policeman, Richard Nerima, would reveal the criminal activities of the Armenians saying that he drove the two brothers to the printing press and saw them burning the newspapers.
Former Internal Security minister, the late John Michuki, would jump to the rescue of the “investors”, terming the raid as a government operation.
“If you rattle a snake, be ready to beaten by it,” Mr Michuki said, showing how powerfully-connected the two brothers were.
But three months later, on June 8, 2006, the two would be involved in a fracas, assaulting a customs officer at JKIA leading to their midnight arrest at their Runda home and subsequent deportation to Dubai the following day at 7.30pm.
President Kibaki would institute a seven-member commission of inquiry headed by former commissioner of police Shadrack Kiruki on June 13, 2006 to look into the activities of the controversial Armenian brothers. Findings of the commission have never been made public.
For a man who said attempting to dislodge Kanu from power was akin to cutting a Mugumo tree using a razor blade, he could not rein corruption in his government despite a pledge to tackle the scourge.
Further, he also failed to wrestle the monster of tribalism in the government, instead entrenching ethnicity in the public service with a majority of employees at Treasury, Kenya Revenue Authority, provincial administration and diplomatic service coming from his community.
In 2005, the Anglo Leasing scandal came to the limelight, with the saga touching even the President's closest allies after it emerged that six of the contracts were signed during his administration between January 2003 and May 2004.
Only technocrats implicated in the shady deals paid the price and not the politicians involved.
In November 2005, the late Kibaki would controversially dissolve his cabinet sending home the then Roads minister Raila Odinga and his allies, who had led the “No” campaign, after a humiliating rejection of a draft constitution he had championed.
His wife Lucy also ensured that her husband’s administration never lacked drama, packing and dishing slaps at will.
In May 2005, she stormed the Nation Centre to protest “negative media coverage”, her bodyguards holding staff there hostage from about 11pm to 5. 30am the following day. Attempt by one reporter, Clifford Derrick Otieno, to record the ordeal earned him a hot slap from the First Lady.
The bone of contention was that Standard newspaper had run a story that she stormed the home of the World Bank country director during his farewell party demanding them to turn down the loud music.
In March 2009, amidst mounting speculations that the late Kibaki that he had more than one wife, Lucy made her husband to hold a presser to set the record straight.
“I want to make it very clear that I only have only one dear wife, Lucy,” said Kibaki during a press conference at State House.
But what shattered an otherwise successful presidency came in the 2007 presidential election where he would be controversially declared winner in December 2007.
The contentious announcement and subsequent nightfall swearing in would end in a political disaster with ensuing widespread protests leading to violence that led to the death of at least 1,300 people and the displacement of more than 600, 000 people.
