Israel and the Shikun & Binui Corruption Scandal in Kenya
Now something that hasn’t been widely reported in the jewish-dominated Western media – although it has been featured widely in African media outlets - is the recent culmination of the major bribery scandal in Kenya involving the Israeli multinational ‘Shikun & Binui’ whose core business is construction and infrastructure development.
The issue focuses on road building contracts in Kenya where ‘Shikun & Binui’ paid bribes to Kenyan government officials to ensure their tenders were accepted between 2008 and 2018 so that ‘Shikun & Binui’ would make sizeable profits on the backs of defrauding the taxpayers of Kenya.
Ironically this all came to light not because of the police force in Kenya, but rather because Israel is so corrupt that it actually causes it very real and significant problems in functioning as a normal economy and state. Hence Israeli police are the ones who stumbled upon this while investigating ‘Shikun & Binui’s’ books and then proceeded to alert the authorities in Kenya.
As ‘The Star’ – formerly the ‘Nairobi Star’ - of Kenya explains:
‘Kenya is grappling with a fallout from a major bribery scandal after an Israeli construction firm was fined Sh9.1 billion.
The company was found guilty of paying bribes to Kenyan officials to secure lucrative construction contracts.
While Shikun & Binui faces financial repercussions, a critical question remains unanswered: will the Kenyan officials implicated in the scheme be held accountable?’ (1)
Now corruption in Kenya is nothing new as the country has been rather corrupt for a long time, (2) but the problem here – and why it has been so commented on in the African media – (3) is the sheer scale of it.
As ‘The Star’ goes on to explain:
‘Shikun & Binui, Israel’s largest infrastructure and real estate company, and its executives were found guilty but spared jail in a historic plea bargain that will see the giant multinational pay Sh9.1 billion in fines.
According to the investigations conducted by the Israel Police Authority, the firm’s senior officials bribed Kenyan officials between 2008 and 2017 to win lucrative road tenders.
The revelations place in the spotlight ministers and principal secretaries who were in office during the period.
The firm worked in Kenya through its subsidiary Soleh Boneh International Holdings.
In 2010, the government controversially awarded the company a Sh14 billion tender for the construction of Mau Summit-Kericho-Kisumu highway.
In 2018, the Israeli authorities started investigating the firm following the suspicious payments to public servants in Kenya and other African countries.
The payments were made using separate accounts.
Further, the company failed to disclose the payments in its financial report, contrary to Israeli laws, pointing to possible bribery that triggered the probe.
This followed the amendment of the Israeli criminal law in 2008, which established the offence of bribing foreign public servants to promote business activities.
However, the company’s top managers have been spared jail terms after the company entered into a plea bargain agreement with the country’s taxation and economic prosecutor’s office to pay the state the fine.
Ahead of the investigations, Israeli authorities froze many assets worth billions of shillings belonging to the firm.
In exchange for the release of the assets, Shikun & Binui deposited a sum of NIS250 million ($67.5 million or Sh8.67 billion) in the confiscation fund of the general custodian.
The amount increased due to differences in returns over time to NIS277 million ($74.79 million or Sh9.61 billion).
As part of the settlement, it was determined that NIS260 million (Sh9.02 billion) will be forfeited from this amount, which includes an additional fine of NIS10 million (Sh346.95 million) on the subsidiary SBI Infrastructure.
A sum of approximately NIS17 million (Sh589.81 million), the difference in returns, will be returned so that a total of NIS260 million (Sh9.02 billion) will be paid in the case.
The case is set to be closed.
“I’m glad that this old affair that has continued for years has ended with the closing of the case against the company. We now look to the future with our full energy,” Shikun & Binui chairperson Naty Saidoff is quoted as saying in local dailies in Israel.
The investigation was concluded five years ago, but the decision to jail the convicts was delayed as the firm sought an out-of-court settlement.
In 2021, it was decided that the case be closed in exchange for the payment.
In 2019, the commission reported questioning several state officers, both serving at the time and previously, who were allegedly involved in the corrupt scheme.
The officers allegedly received bribes to award the Sh14 billion tender for the construction of the Mau Summit-Kericho-Kisumu highway to Shikhun & Binui.’ (4)
Put another way: ‘Shikun & Binui’ put in a tender for one road - the Mau Summit-Kericho-Kisumu highway – of 14 billion Israeli shekels which is roughly $3.9 billion and likely is a sizeable overestimate on what it should have cost (hence the need to bribe officials to accept it).
For context: the government of Kenya spent $28 billion as its total annual budget between FY 2023/2024 (5) so this $3.9 billion for one road from ‘Shikun & Binui’ represents roughly 14 percent of Kenya’s annual government expenditure!
This is not a small amount of money for government of Kenya nor the Kenyan taxpayers.
But who is behind ‘Shikun & Binui’?
Well in truth it was largely two Israeli jewish billionaires.
The first is Netanel ‘Naty’ Saidoff; who lives in America where he is major figure in the Israel Lobby. To be specific: he is on the board of the ‘American Jewish Committee’, the ‘Israeli-American Council’ and is Vice President of ‘StandWithUs’ (his wife is also on the board) as well as being a major ‘pro-Israel’ jewish donor in his own right. (6)
The second was Shari Arison – who inherited the shares from her father Ted Arison (who made his money from his company ‘Carnival Cruises’) in 1999 on his death - (7) who was questioned extensively by Israeli police in 2018 over her involvement in the bribing of Kenyan government officials after Arison quickly divested herself of her investments in ‘Shikun & Binui’ to Saidoff at a significant discount after the scandal began to break. (8)
To quote the ‘Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project’:
‘Arison’s company, Arison Investments, was the owner of Shikun & Binui for 22 years until it sold its 47.5 percent stake in the company on Aug. 6, 2018 for 1.1. billion shekels (US$296 million). The price was 14 percent lower than the stock value.
Israel’s anti-corruption unit, Lahav 433, questioned her along with Efrat Peled, the CEO of Arison Investments, on suspicion of involvement in bribery and Securities Law offenses relating to business reports, according to The Times of Israel.
According to a statement from The Arison Group, published in the Jerusalem Post, Shari Arison and Efrat Peled “cooperated fully and are confident that there was no flaw in their conduct... The Arison Group has zero tolerance for any inappropriate conduct.”
Shikun & Binui is suspected of having bribed Kenyan officials to advance projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars in Kenya and other countries, Reuters said.
As an heiress to the Carnival Cruise fortune, Arison is worth an estimated net worth of more than 20 billion shekels (US$5.5 billion). So some argue that the investigation is unlikely to have any significant impact on her.
Shikun & Binui’s subsidiary Solel Boneh International Holdings (SBI Holdings) is the firm working in Kenya. It was chosen to build the World Bank-funded Mau Summit-Kericho-Kisumu Highway for 14 billion shekels ($3.8 billion) in 2010. However, since that time, they are suspected of having bribed their way into more lucrative construction projects throughout the continent.
An investigation into these allegations was first opened in February 2018, when four current and former employees of Shikun & Binui were detained and questioned.
Arison’s company has publicized Shikun & Binui’s operations in Africa as having eco-friendly and ethical values, but the profits the company makes from the continent are clearly the most valuable aspect of the projects. Haaretz reported that the 65 percent of S&B’s earnings before interest and taxes came from Africa in 2016.
Israeli companies have a long history of conducting corrupt operations in Africa, but previously, no one paid attention. Now, criminal practices are coming to light, Haaretz wrote.’ (9)
Now it is pretty clear that this was deliberate and intentional corruption by ‘Shikun & Binui’ with the apparent connivance of Arison and Saidhoff, but what did the author of this piece mean by ‘Israeli companies have a long history of conducting corrupt operations in Africa’?
Well, they are likely referring to several things I’ve already previously discussed in detail such as the Israeli ultra-Orthodox billionaire Daniel Gertler’s looting – via government bribes – of rare minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo (10) as well as Gertler’s laundering of ‘blood diamonds’ from Africa into the global diamond market via the Israeli Diamond Borse, (11) the US-based jewish-owned hedge fund ‘Ochs-Ziff’ funding Robert Mugabe’s anti-White and anti-opposition violence in Zimbabwe in exchange for rights to the country’s valuable platinum resources, (12) Israeli billionaire and Gertler’s fellow diamond tycoon Beny Steinmetz’s bribing government officials in Guinea in order to gain the mining rights to the world’s largest known untapped iron ore deposit in the Simandou Mountains (13) and that’s not even including the Israeli government who armed the Hutus in their attempt to wipe out the Tutsis in the Rwandan genocide in 1994! (14)
The jews have quite a lot to answer for in Africa: don’t they?
References
(1) https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2024-07-11-kenyan-officials-free-as-israeli-firm-found-guilty-fined-sh9bn
(2) https://www.transparency.org/en/countries/kenya
(3) See for example: https://www.thekenyandiaspora.com/stories/1032/Israels-bribery-investigations-now-set-to-implicate-past-regimes-Kenyan-officials ; https://nation.africa/kenya/news/revealed-kenyans-linked-to-sh14bn-israeli-tender-probe-4697968 ; https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/bd/news/israel-to-indict-firm-in-kenya-bribery-scam-2251756
(4) https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2024-07-11-kenyan-officials-free-as-israeli-firm-found-guilty-fined-sh9bn
(5) https://www.statista.com/statistics/1223279/government-expenditure-in-kenya/
(6) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naty_Saidoff#Philanthropy; https://projectnemesis.net/naty-saidoff/; https://jewishjournal.com/news/united-states/171115/
(7) https://www.hadassahmagazine.org/2013/12/10/profile-shari-arison/
(8) https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/2018-06-14/ty-article/naty-saidoff-to-buy-shari-arisons-company-for-310m/0000017f-e591-da9b-a1ff-edff1f410000
(9) https://www.occrp.org/en/news/israels-wealthiest-woman-questioned-for-bribery
(10) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/daniel-gertler-and-the-israeli-looting
(11) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/daniel-gertler-and-the-israeli-trade
(12) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/robert-mugabe-and-his-jewish-backers
(13) https://www.occrp.org/en/project/the-steinmetz-scandals/deals-that-helped-tycoon-steinmetz-combat-bribery-fallout
(14) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-israeli-role-in-the-genocide