On the night of April 2, detectives from Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations swept into the homes of four of the country’s most powerful energy officials. By dawn, the men who had collectively controlled the regulation, transport, and policy of Kenya’s entire fuel supply chain were in custody — accused of fabricating a national fuel shortage to justify a multibillion-shilling procurement deal that enriched private companies and delivered substandard fuel to a nation already on edge.
The arrests sent shockwaves through Nairobi’s political establishment and laid bare, in extraordinary detail, the mechanics of an alleged fraud that exploited a genuine global oil crisis for private gain. But the deeper story — one that senior government officials have shown little interest in pursuing — is not about the men who were arrested. It is about the system they are accused of betraying, and whether that system was designed to serve the public in the first place.
A Scheme Built on Geopolitical Fear
The backdrop was real enough. In early 2026, United States and Israeli military strikes on Iran triggered the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical oil chokepoints. Brent crude surged past $120 a barrel. An Emirates National Oil Company vessel destined for Kenya was stranded in Dubai. Across East Africa, fuel anxiety was palpable.
But according to investigators, Kenya’s actual fuel reserves at the time were far from critical — roughly 16 days of petrol and 19 days of diesel, levels well within operational norms. What the arrested officials allegedly did was falsify those numbers, painting a picture of near-depletion that did not exist, to justify an emergency procurement outside the government’s own framework.
The men accused of orchestrating the scheme held every lever that mattered. Daniel Kiptoo Bargoria, the Director General of the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority, controlled the regulatory apparatus. Joe Sang, the Managing Director of the Kenya Pipeline Company, oversaw the physical infrastructure. Mohamed Liban, the Principal Secretary for Petroleum, set national policy. Together, investigators allege, they could — and did — manipulate the reported state of Kenya’s fuel reserves to manufacture a crisis.
The Ship That Changed Course
Central to the investigation is the MV Paloma, a fuel tanker carrying more than 60,000 metric tonnes of petroleum products. The vessel had originally been destined for Angola. Between March 27 and 29, it was allegedly rerouted to the port of Mombasa. The fuel, investigators believe, originated from Saudi Aramco, passed through an as-yet-unnamed international intermediary, and arrived in Kenya through One Petroleum Limited, a Mombasa-based company with deep ties to the country’s political class.
The price was staggering. Under Kenya’s Government-to-Government oil import framework — the system designed to eliminate exactly this kind of profiteering — fuel was contracted at roughly $84 per tonne. The emergency shipment arrived at $290 per tonne, nearly three and a half times the agreed rate. A second company, Oryx Energies, the Kenyan subsidiary of a Swiss multinational, was also authorized to supply fuel under the emergency arrangement. The total estimated overpayment: between KSh 4 billion and KSh 8 billion.
And the fuel itself, investigators say, was substandard — with sulphur levels that exceeded Kenyan regulatory limits.
A Whistleblower in the Pipeline
The scheme might have succeeded were it not for a quality assurance manager at the Kenya Pipeline Company whose name has not been publicly disclosed. When the MV Paloma’s cargo reached Mombasa, this official tested the fuel, found it non-compliant, and refused to authorize discharge — despite what sources describe as significant internal pressure to approve the shipment. The refusal triggered the DCI investigation that led to the April 2 arrests.
Subsequent raids on the officials’ homes reportedly yielded approximately KSh 500 million in cash and assets, though this figure has not been confirmed in the formal government statement issued by Chief of Staff Felix Koskei, who characterized the scandal as “economic sabotage.” Three of the four arrested officials resigned within 48 hours. No formal charges had been filed as of this writing.
The Companies at the Center
One Petroleum Limited, incorporated in Mombasa in 2010 with a nominal share capital of just KSh 5.1 million, is an unlikely vehicle for a deal of this magnitude — until one examines its corporate architecture. The company carries over $505 million in registered debt instruments. Its majority shareholder is Mbaraki Holdings Limited, a Mauritius-registered entity whose beneficial ownership structure is opaque. One Petroleum is a subsidiary of MJ Group, controlled by Mohammed Jaffer of Mombasa, whose business empire includes Grain Bulk Handlers — a firm that controls an estimated 98 percent of all grain imports through Mombasa port.
Jaffer is no stranger to the corridors of power. He attended State House functions hosted by President William Ruto in 2023 and was publicly recognized by the administration for entrepreneurship. His prior legal entanglements include Kenya Revenue Authority tax evasion proceedings in 2021 and KPC conspiracy charges in 2019. Among One Petroleum’s directors is Ali Salaah Balala, a nephew of former Tourism Cabinet Secretary Najib Balala — a detail that underscores the firm’s proximity to Kenya’s governing elite.
Oryx Energies Kenya, for its part, is no obscure newcomer. The Kenyan arm of the Swiss-based AOG Group, it was one of three companies originally selected by EPRA to distribute fuel under the G2G framework. It was dropped by Saudi Aramco in December 2023 over a pricing dispute, only to re-enter the arrangement later. The company carries $250 million in registered security debentures.
The Framework Nobody Can Examine
To understand why this scandal has produced such fierce political fallout, one must understand the Government-to-Government framework itself — and why President Ruto has staked so much of his economic credibility on it.
Signed in March 2023 with three Gulf state-owned producers — Saudi Aramco Trading Fujairah, ADNOC Global Trading, and Emirates National Oil Company Singapore — the framework’s centerpiece was a 180-day deferred payment mechanism that reduced Kenya’s monthly foreign exchange demand by an estimated $500 million. The administration credited the deal with stabilizing the Kenyan shilling from KSh 166 to KSh 129 against the dollar. For Ruto, it was proof of concept — evidence that his government could deliver structural economic reform where his predecessors had not.
But the framework has been contested from the start. In November 2023, opposition leader Raila Odinga released a dossier alleging that handpicked local distributors were selling G2G fuel at double the bulk price and that the Supplier Purchase Agreement had never been made public. The International Monetary Fund raised concerns about foreign exchange market distortion and rollover risk. Kenya’s own National Treasury reportedly told the IMF the deal had caused more distortion than intended and pledged to exit — a promise that was never honored.
This April, MP Ndindi Nyoro of Kiharu offered perhaps the most damaging public assessment, alleging that the G2G framework “has long operated as a business model benefiting well-connected players” and that as much as 75 percent of volumes flow through companies with ties to Kenya’s Turkana oil interests.
The Political Calculus of Selective Justice
The government’s swift action against the energy officials stands in stark contrast to its response — or absence of response — to a series of scandals of equal or greater magnitude. The eCitizen digital platform lost an estimated KSh 9 billion with no firings and no prosecutions. The Social Health Authority fraud consumed over KSh 11 billion with only token mid-level arrests. A KSh 6.6 billion edible oils import scandal resulted in a cabinet secretary being quietly transferred to another ministry. Fake fertilizer was distributed to farmers nationwide in 2024; the impeachment vote against the responsible minister was killed by coalition lawmakers.
In each of these cases, the pattern was the same: initial outrage, procedural gestures, and eventual silence. No senior official was held accountable. No systemic reform followed.
Why, then, did the fuel scandal produce arrests within days?
The answer, according to lawmakers and analysts across the political spectrum, has less to do with principle than with politics. The arrested officials are technocrats — not members of parliament, not allied governors, not partners in the broad-based government. They were, in political terms, expendable. The one political figure in the chain — Energy Cabinet Secretary Opiyo Wandayi, an ODM appointee in Ruto’s coalition government — was silent for more than 48 hours before issuing a carefully worded statement calling for investigations to proceed. He has neither resigned nor been fired, despite the fact that his own March 25 public assurance that “there is no shortage of fuel in this country” now reads as either complicity or catastrophic ignorance.
Senator Boni Khalwale of Kakamega put the contradiction bluntly, arguing that Wandayi either knew about the diversion and should be arrested, or did not know and should be sacked for gross incompetence.
Former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, now positioning himself for a 2027 challenge, took a different tack entirely — defending the arrested officials and suggesting they may have been acting in the national interest by sourcing cheaper fuel during a global crisis. It was a calculated move designed to build sympathy among the civil service ahead of the next election.
President Ruto himself has not addressed the scandal directly. His most recent public statement on the G2G framework — praising it as “prudent and forward-looking” — was issued on March 30, just three days before his own detectives arrested the men who ran it.
The Question That Remains
The central irony of the fuel scandal is difficult to ignore. By prosecuting officials who allegedly went outside the G2G framework, the government has shielded the framework itself from the scrutiny it has long invited. The harder questions — who selected the local distributors, who benefits from the opaque pricing structure, whether the architecture itself functions as a patronage vehicle — remain not only unanswered but officially unasked.
Nyoro’s assessment, delivered on the floor of Parliament, cut closest to the bone: the arrests, he said, had “very little to do with the welfare of Kenyans, and everything to do with small people who have eaten what belongs to the big man.”
Whether that characterization is fair or merely partisan, it captures a sentiment that has hardened across Kenya’s political landscape in the Ruto era: that accountability, when it comes, is not a function of principle but of proximity to power. The officials who were arrested are not accused of being innocent. They are accused of being unprotected.
The fuel that arrived aboard the MV Paloma failed quality tests. The questions this scandal has raised about governance in Kenya are unlikely to be tested at all.
All allegations referenced in this article are reported as alleged. No formal charges had been filed against any individual as of the date of publication.
