Peter Alfred Ndakwe – Deci pyramid scheme, Clip Investment Sacco Ltd, Panama Papers
Peter Alfred Ndakwe, the man behind the infamous CLIP Pyramid scheme is now a man under siege. He vanished with Sh1.9 billion of pyramid scheme money after setting up two offshore dummy companies in Panama. The two companies were registered by a Panama law firm notorious for helping register firms for oligarchs and dictators around the world.
Deci Pyramid Scheme
Clip Pyramid Scheme was the second largest pyramid scheme after Deci pyramid scheme.
Deci pyramid scheme was founded by George Odinga Donde and Mary Odinga and it took Sh2.4 billion from its 93,485 members.
How Peter Alfred Ndakwe stole Sh1.9 billion of pyramid scheme money
Peter Alfred Ndakwe, the chairman of Clip Investment Sacco Ltd, used a Nairobi law firm, Iseme, Kamau & Maema Advocates, to register the two shell companies Sun Jopkins SA and Pentkinson SA to hide the ownership of 11 local companies.
The prefix SA after Petkinson and Sun Jopkins stand for sociétés anonyms, used to refer to anonymous companies. That way, it was hard to trace the beneficial owner of the company.
This is a list of the 11 Companies that were sent to Panama for registration by Iseme, Kamau & Maema Advocates;
- Alpek Ltd,
- Geomax Ltd,
- Dowkinstar Property Management Ltd,
- Dorkip Ltd,
- Dovlin Ltd,
- Petsun Ltd,
- Pektas Ltd,
- Perkinstar Ltd,
- Ndasun Ltd,
- Kingdom Press Ltd and
- Suvlinx Ltd.
By registering these companies, Iseme, Kamau & Maema Advocates did nothing wrong because Lawyers register companies for clients all the time and they have no say what the client does with the company once it is registered.
Peter Alfred Ndakwe thought that by having the two shell companies owning his local firms, he would never be caught and the ownership of his properties would never be traced to him.
In total, Kenyan investors lost about Sh8 billion in the Ponzi-like schemes that started in 2006.
The two companies in Panama had ghost Directors who had given Peter Alfred Ndakwe the powers of attorney to open bank accounts on their behalf and to draw against the same.
These ghost Directors had also given Peter Alfred Ndakwe the powers to determine the other person or persons who may jointly or individually open bank accounts, deposit money, and endorse cheques payable to the Company.
With a large chunk of money at his disposal and the realization that he can open anonymous offshore accounts, Peter Alfred Ndakwe got greedy and did the obvious.
These details are now contained in massive global data leaks obtained by the Washington DC-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to lay bare how the world’s wealthiest citizens transact businesses and hide their financial records from the public.
This whole saga begun on February 22, 2006 during lunch when the two Kenyan lawyers William Maema and James Kamau had a date with Amauri Batista, an official of Mossack Fonseca (MF), which registers shell companies in Panama for clients who want to hide their faces. Mr Batista was in Nairobi shopping for business and met partners of several law firms.
The two companies were registered very fast because Mossack Fonseca wanted to impress local law firms so that they could get more business. A note written by MF lawyer Batista after the Nairobi meeting shows that he was optimistic Nairobi lawyers would give them business.
Mossack Fonseca
Mossack Fonseca, is a firm that had been founded in 1977 by German-born Jurgen Mossack and a Panamanian man named Ramón Fonseca and which had become famous for creating dummy companies in Panama via its affiliated offices in 44 countries.
Mossack Fonseca had a long list of shy clients. It has been reported, authoritatively, that the firm uses a closely-linked firm, MF Corporate Services, to help these clients set up shell companies.
These clients include Rami Makhlouf, the richest and most powerful businessman in Syria, believed to be President Bashar al Assad’s “bagman” plus associates of Muammar Gaddafi and Robert Mugabe. Others include an Israeli billionaire and business oligarch named Lázaro Báez.
Peter Alfred Ndakwe businesses
Peter Alfred Ndakwe is an author of several Christian books and whose born-again credentials endeared him to the pyramid scheme victims. Mr Ndakwe also ran another company, Kings Script Publishers Ltd, which not only published his books, but also collected money from the public.
As the founder of Clip Investment Sacco Ltd, Mr Ndakwe was accused by his 5,846 victims of fleecing them of more than Sh1.9 billion. That case is still in court.
According to a Task Force Report on Pyramid Schemes tabled in Parliament, Mr Peter Alfred Ndakwe is alleged to have also bought plots in Runda — L.R 14970/15, 14970/14, 14970/7 and 14970/6 — worth Sh 200 million and had transferred the properties to Perkinstar Ltd owned by this new Panama firms, Sun Jopskin SA and Pentinkson SA.
The two companies’s registration expired in 2014 and were duly renewed after Mossack Fonseca & Co. were paid “reactivation fee” of $10,697 (Sh1 million). While this amount was used to only reactivate Sun Jopkins, Mr Maema protested in an email: “We and our clients were under the impression that it covered the reactivation of both companies.
