Devani fights extradition over Triton scam

The architect of the Sh7.6 billion Triton oil scandal Yagnesh Devani will have his day in a UK court on Tuesday as he fights an order to extradite him to Kenya to face multiple criminal charges.

Mr Devani is seeking to reverse the September 2014 extradition order by District Judge John Zani of London’s Westminster Magistrates Court.

Initially, the appeal ought to have taken place from July 14 to July 16 but a press officer of Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) told the Sunday Nation that the dates were changed.

“The appeal is now listed for October, 6,” the CPS press office said.

Kenya would be represented by two UK lawyers at the hearing, the Director of Public Prosecutions Keriako Tobiko disclosed in an earlier interview.

Mr Devani fled the country in 2009 to India and then the UK after the scandal in which Triton was allowed by the Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) to collect oil valued at Sh7.6 billion and sell it on a bank’s behalf without its consent, creating a fuel shortage that came to light.

Mr Devani is one of the high-profile Kenyan tycoons being held in the UK.

The other one is Ketan Somaia who was sentenced to eight years in jail by Justice Richard Hone of the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, commonly known as the Old Bailey in July 2014 for fleecing a former friend and investors out of £13.5 million (about Sh2.1 billion) that they had put into his struggling Dolphin Group 15 years ago.

A UK firm, Glencore Energy (UK) Ltd had co-financed Triton’s purchase of vast quantities of diesel in 2008 with a number of local banks.

The agreement had been that KPC would only release the fuel to Triton with the express authority of the financiers.

But KPC went ahead to release the fuel to Triton, which subsequently went under with more than Sh7.6 billion worth of fuel.

This is had purchased with financing by amongst others Glencore, Kenya Commercial Bank, Fortis Bank and the Emirates National Oil Company.