Whistleblower Paul Hopkins says in his latest revelations to a British newspaper the Independent that high-ranking officials in Mr Odinga’s office intervened to stop the KRA from freezing Mastermind’s accounts over non-payment taxes worth billions of shillings.

The then Mutito MP Kiema Kilonzo filed a question in the House seeking to know whether Mastermind had been remitting taxes to the KRA since 2007 and accused Mr Odinga, then Prime Minister, of shielding the cigarette firm from paying taxes.

“The court case that exists challenges issues up to April 2010. What about penalties, taxes and interest thereafter? I table a letter from the PM instructing that the company’s taxes should not be collected,” Mr Kilonzo told the House.

whistle blower hopkins vs Whistle blower baba

interesting

For more than five years, Mr Hopkins accumulated a detailed dossier of KRA tax demands and other legal documents which allegedly revealed that Mastermind regularly failed to pay its tax bill. The KRA documents and correspondence showed the Kenyan tax authority was demanding billions in unpaid taxes from Mastermind but collecting only a fraction of it. Mr Hopkins said senior BAT officials instructed him to leak some of the documents to Kenyan newspapers and parliamentarians to embarrass the company as well as force the KRA to be more aggressive in its tax collecting.

According to documents seen by The Independent on Sunday, the strategy was only partially successful and Mastermind paid millions more in taxes. However, when the KRA wrote to Mastermind’s bankers threatening to freeze accounts until the outstanding amounts were paid, officials in the office of former Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga stepped in and ordered them to suspend the demands.

It has taken me like 5 days of pain to get rid of the shit they sell from my system. If I become president, I will shut down BAT. Mara Moja.

If anyone here thinks BAT is a good company, please raise your hand so we can know how much change needs to be in our education system.

That company has for the past 5 years been taking my children's money so it can sell me what the gov't says is bad for you. Did anyone miss the irony in that statement. Gov't tells you something is bad even has warnings all over, but heck, just smoke it, they are paying taxes not like Mastermind.

I know its always sexy to add baba and uhuru on comments in wazua but lets be honest.

If BAT was a mama mboga selling changaa, they would have been shut down eons ago.

It has taken me like 5 days of pain to get rid of the shit they sell from my system. If I become president, I will shut down BAT. Mara Moja.

There is no politician, none, absolutely none in the whole wide world who has not taken money from these sellers of stuff that is likely to cause cancer even in children who don't smoke it.