In the 1977/78 fiscal year, Dr Nataverbhai Patel's Anpi Pharma and related outfits were awarded tenders for Sh80mn of MoH’s Sh150mn budget for drugs.
They either undersupplied or billed without supplying.
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Of cartels, drugs and elections...
nation.africa/kenya/news/ori…
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Anpi Pharma would under-quote to win the tender then after winning, would come back and state:
“freight charges and cost of materials have gone up. I want to vary the tender.”
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Before Kemsa, there was the Central Medical Stores ran by a Zachariah Shimechero, a Deputy Commissioner of Police at independence and later the Commissioner of Settlement of Squatters.
nation.africa/kenya/news/zac…
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Shimechero schooled at Mang’u High School with the late minister John Michuki. He joined the police service with a direct admission to Assistant Inspector after finishing Kiganjo Police Training College in 1955.
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Shimechero was charged in the morning of Wednesday July 25, 1973 with two counts of corruption in office relating to the supply of drugs to the Ministry of Health.
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Shimechero allegedly received a total of Sh143,250 as reward from businessman Arvind Kumar Patel, a director of Poly Chemists for quotations for laboratory equipment, in order to procure two Government tenders for his firm .
Poly was an associate of Anpi Pharma.
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Shimechero was tried and jailed for two years for fraud. Unlike today, the officer's trial did not elicit street protests by hired goons in a country where honesty is demonised and corruption glorified.
He passed on last month after suffering a stroke
the-star.co.ke/opinion/column…
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The Nation newspaper broke the story of the scandal in 1973 (just like today) and Peter Mwaura won Journalist of the Year award in the same year for the story.
nation.africa/kenya/blogs-op…
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It's scary how all these things tend to be interconnected... and in a not-so-good way.
In 2017, there were two companies vying for the ballot paper printing job. One was Dubai’s Al Ghurair and the second was South Africa’s Paarl Media.
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Paarl is related to Media24 which in turn is related to Naspers.
Naspers is associated with the architects of apartheid - D. F. Malan, H. F. Verwoerd and P. W. Botha and it was in 2015 forced to issue a public apology to the victims and survivors of the apartheid system.
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"In Kenya, Paarl was represented by Dr Shailesh Patel, a well-known tenderpreneur who was the Chief Executive Officer of Africa Infrastructure Development Company."
Dr Patel, a pharmacist, is the son of Nataverbhai Patel, the founder of Anpi Pharma.
nation.africa/kenya/news/bat…
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The IEBC eventually awarded Dubai-based Al Ghurair Printing and Publishing Company the Sh2.5 billion tender to print ballot papers for the 2017 elections
nation.africa/kenya/news/pol…
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