Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta, Members Of His Family Cited In Pandora Papers

President Uhuru Kenyatta, who hails from one of Kenya’s best-known political dynasties, campaigned with an anti-corruption platform and called for transparency in politics.

But leaked documents from the Pandora Papers show Uhuru Kenyatta and his mother are beneficiaries of a secret foundation in Panama.

ICIJ further learn that the names of seven members of the Kenyatta family are cited by the Pandora Papers as being variously linked to 11 offshore companies and foundations worth more than $30 million, according to the documents.

The documents reveal that family members used offshore companies to buy three properties in the UK. One of them, an apartment near Westminster in London, valued at an estimated £1million, was until this summer rented to a UK Member of Parliament. As for the Kenyan president’s younger brother, Muhoho Kenyatta, he is said to own an offshore company with a portfolio of cash, stocks and bonds worth $31.6 million in 2016.

Other documents from the leaked show a foundation created in Panama in 2003 for the president’s mother, now 88, “Mama” Ngina Kenyatta. Upon his death, all assets held in the foundation were to pass to his son, Uhuru. In 2018, the latter, questioned by the BBC on the wealth of his family, declared bluntly: “I have always said that what we have is open to the public. As a civil servant, I am supposed to make my fortune known and we declare it every year”.

Uhuru Kenyatta and his family did not respond to the ICIJ’s requests.