Ex-NTV Journalist Salim Swaleh, who is currently Musalia Mudavadi’s Press Secretary, and other government officials were arrested this morning after attempting to extort some foreign nationals.
The ex-journalist was among other officials who wanted to dupe an international investor with millions of shillings.
Sources still don’t know how much they first extorted from the foreign nationals. “We took into custody a group of government employees and con artists who assisted them with their activities at the OPCS-MFDA at Kenya Railways headquarters last Saturday, June 22.”
According to Peter Warutere, secretary for strategic communication in the Office of the Prime Cabinet Secretary and Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs (OPCS-MFDA), “more investigations by relevant law enforcement organisations are in progress to locate and apprehend additional conspirators who might have been implicated.”
“OPCS-MFDA security received a tip that led to the arrests.” They then intensified surveillance at the OPCS-MFDA Railways Office to stop the fraudsters’ alleged nefarious acts of impersonation and misuse of the facility.”
Warutere said the gang would behave as officials and VIP guests and enter the Railways Building at different times and days.
They led the majority of their victims, who were foreigners, inside the Railways Building under the guise of meetings with senior government officials to request favors in exchange for payments, according to Warutere.
Additionally, the monitoring was able to locate and identify their other conspirators, including government agents who helped them carry out their heinous plans.
Salim Swaleh, Director of OPCS Press Service, was among those arrested, according to Warutere, after his office found the con artists using fictitious door switch nametags.
According to him, the detained government officials had become experts at “renting” out offices to criminals by either giving up their spaces for the fraudsters to use or falsely portraying themselves.
“In order to further the scams, this deception also involved replacing real name tags on office doors with fake ones,” he said.
In one of the OPCS-MFDA Railway offices, where the confidence tricksters had set up shop waiting for their victims on Saturday, the group had the audacity to try to bribe their way out.