Kel Chemicals boss implicates Office of the President officials in fake fertiliser scandal

The senior management of Kel Chemicals, the company at the centre of the ongoing fake fertilizer probe by Parliament, has implicated senior government officials in the scandal.

Appearing before the National Assembly's Agriculture Committee, Kel Chemicals Chief Operating Officer (COO) Devesh Patel dragged the names of senior government officials attached to the Office of the President, Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) and the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) into the scandal.

Patel told the Committee of a high-stakes meeting he allegedly attended with the senior public servants, moments before his unprecedented arrest, alleging that he was arrested and detained at a police station after the meeting ended prematurely.

“While giving my statement, Ms. Esther Ngari kept interrupting me saying that I am making substandard fertiliser. She said she'd close our factories and told Mr. Felix Koskei to punish us," he said. 

“Thereafter, Koskei did not finish listening to me and instead asked some police to arrest me together with Collins Ng'etich and take me to the DCI headquarters in Kiambu. I was arrested without being informed of the reasons for my arrest, no representation from counsel and I wrote my statement while under duress. I was later released on a 100,000 police bond”.

Patel further alleged that he was coerced into writing a letter admitting that they had produced and distributed fake fertilizer while in police detention.

"I was forced to write a letter indicating that I had recalled the batches of fertilizer," he said. 

The damning allegations from Patel come barely a week after Kel Chemical's factory was inspected and later closed by Agriculture CS Mithika Linturi over alleged involvement in the fake fertilizer scandal.