The US government is set to crack whip on some Kenyan judicial officers, the police and prosecutors after being linked to the multi-billion drug trafficking syndicate involving the notorious Akasha brothers.
In October 2018, 41-year-old Baktash Akasha Abdalla and 29-year-old Ibrahim Akasha appeared before a US court where they pleaded guilty after being arrested in Kenya on November 9, 2014.
The Akasha brothers were arrested and extradited to the US after providing 99kgs of heroin and 2kgs of Methamphetamine through an undercover operation masterminded by the US drug enforcement agency that sought to expose their illegal drug trafficking business.
Baktash was tricked by US undercover agents and he unknowingly introduced them to his heroin suppliers in Pakistan and a narcotics shipper from Afghanstan.
The two pleaded guilty in an attempt to get a lenient jail term in the drug trafficking, bribery, violence and murder charges they are facing.
Kenyan and US authorities indicated that they had collected overwhelming evidence against the two brothers who would have been given a life imprisonment for the offences, had the case gone to full hearing.
Kenyan judges, prosecutors and the police who handled the case allegedly received hundreds of thousands of dollars as bribes from the Akashas with an aim to frustrate their extradition.
In February 2017, NTV Kenya reported that Akasha brothers reportedly gave out bribe amounting to Sh4 million to drag the case in court.
Their case was being heard in Mombasa and Malindi courts.
Justice Chacha Mwita, and Mombasa High Court judge Justice Dora Chepkwony were linked to the case.
They are accused of receiving bribes from the Akashas when their case was still being heard in Kenya.
At one point, Justice Chepkowny became the talk of social media after she on August 3, 2018, overruled a 20-year jail term handed to Feisal Mohamed Ali, an ivory trafficking suspect.
The Kenyan was sentenced in 2016 after evidence revealed him as ringleader of an organised crime network that spanned African wildlife parks and buyers in Asia.
His lawyers appealed the case at the Mombasa High Court and judge Chepkwony overturned the sentence terming it as "unconstitutional".
She said: "The evidence relied on to convict the accused person has a lot of gaps and doubts."
However, Chief Justice David Maraga on November 5, wrote to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations asking him to investigate persons behind social media campaigns that “aimed at recklessly besmirching the reputation of officers in the Judiciary”.
“We find the reports unacceptable because they have the potential to demoralise the officers and undermine the administration of justice in the country,” Maraga said in the letter to George Kinoti.
He defended Justice Chepkwony, saying her role in the Akasha case was very minimal.
“As we have said before, we do not condone corruption but to have our judicial officers recklessly besmirched is unacceptable,” Maraga said.
Politicians such as Stanley Livondo was named in court documents as an associate of a South African 'drug dealer' David Armstrong.
The Akashas are said to have engaged in a confrontation with Livondo, a former Kakamega County senatorial aspirant, in a Mombasa shopping mall in 2014.
Ibrahim Akasha is said to have threatened Livondo with a pistol during the public altercation in the mall.
US chief Federal Prosecutor Geoffrey Berman, announced the success made in the prosecution of the Akasha's in New York, saying: "Not only did they manufacture and distribute narcotics for over two decades, they kidnapped, beat, and murdered others who posed a threat to their enterprise."
"When the brothers encountered legal interference, they bribed Kenyan officials including judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officers in an effort to avoid facing the charges against them in the United States," he added.
Baktash and his brother will on February 1, 2019 be sentenced by presiding Judge Victor Marrero.