Commercial Interests in Australia and Israel

Nicholas Biwott has no business interests outside Kenya. He does not own commercial interests in Israel or Australia, and does not nor ever has owned a ranch in Australia.

– Biwotts Lawyer

KROLL ON BIWOTT – COMMERCIAL INTERESTS IN AUSTRALIA AND ISRAEL

Kroll alleged that Nicholas Biwott had, ‘Invested heavily’ outside Kenya with commercial interests in Israel and Australia including owning a 10,000 hectare ranch in Australia.

DID KROLL GET IT RIGHT?

Biwott’s lawyer said: Nicholas Biwott has no business interests outside Kenya. He does not own commercial interests in Israel or Australia, and does not nor ever has owned a ranch in Australia.

THE SOURCE INVESTIGATES…

The claim that Biwott owns a 10,000 hectare ranch in Australia appears to be a repetition of an entirely unsubstantiated statement first made by a James K’Oyoo about Biwott during the 1991 Gicheru Commission of Inquiry (11 October, 1991). The Source has not found any indication that K’Oyoo’s assertion has ever been corroborated by independent evidence.
It is not possible to conduct searches of Israeli corporate records by director or shareholder. It is possible however, to conduct such records in Australia. The Source’s searches of corporate records in Australia have not revealed any shareholdings or directorships held by Biwott or his immediate family.

It is not possible to search land registry records in Australia without an address, nor is it in Israel without ‘parcel numbers’. In making his allegations K’Oyoo’s referred to street names in Nairobi, not Australia or Israel. The Source has found no evidence that at the time of the Gicheru Commission hearings (when K’Oyoo made his allegations), or when the Kenya Kroll Report was being drafted, Biwott owned any land or property in Australia or Israel.

The section in the Kenya Kroll Report on Biwott’s alleged ownership of property in Australia and Israel was in fact a ‘cut and paste’ copy of a profile of Biwott published in the East African Standard in 2002 that in turn was based on K’Oyoo’s unsubstantiated allegations. Once again Kroll it seems relied on the near-verbatim copying of allegations printed in a newspaper for the text of part of their report.

Biwott denied allegations that he had ‘invested heavily’ outside Kenya. His denials were reported in theDaily Nation on 2 September 2007.

Some of the confusion on this issue could have arisen, or been used as the basis for false allegations, from the fact that Nicholas Biwott’s wife Hannie is of Dutch-Jewish origin but often, incorrectly, described as being ‘Israeli’ and that Biwott studied at university in Australia in the 1960s.