Nation Crime Reporter Forced Out?

We reproduce a leaked email of the Nation crime reporter who has resigned under mysterious circumstances

Dear Colleagues,

I wish to inform you that I tendered my resignation yesterday after my reputation was unfairly questioned by Mr Wangethi Mwangi in his desperate attempt to divert attention from the damaging sex scandals that have engulfed him for many years and which are now threatening to tear him apart. This is a false believe because my departure will never undo the scandals and his own mess.

I resigned after Wangethi sent me a scandalous memo making wild accusations that have no basis or foundation. I’ll share the contents in the memo shortly. I replied to his memo and after wide consultations and taking into consideration that I had planned to leave NMG towards the end of this year, I decided to tender my resignation yesterday. I had expressed this desire to quit NMG to some of my colleagues. Unfortunately, it came earlier after Mr Sam Koskei, working in cahoots with Linus Gitahi, and Wangethi, schemed for my downfall for purely personal reasons as I stated in my letter of resignation. See the attached memo in response to Wangethi’s memo and my resignation letter.

In his memo, Mr Mwangi accused me of two things. First, he asked me to respond to an unspecified issue I’m alleged to have done on December 21, 2006, which he claimed contravened my terms of employment with the Nation Media Group. The problem arose because I own a tour firm and Gitahi and Wangethi had earlier told me verbally that NMG rules don’t allow the staff to serve two masters. According to them, a NMG employee should devote all their energies and time on this company. I disagree. Don’t NMG staff have a future? I don’t believe NMG is the beginning and end of life. And my questions to them was; HOW ARE WE THEN SUPPOSED TO SPEND OUR SALARIES? Should we drink all our salary so that by the time they ambush you with a retrenchment letter you go down on their feet begging? If that is what they expected I would do, they are badly mistaken.

Secondly, Wangethi claimed in his memo that the circumstances and “facts surrounding the purchase of a motor vehicle by yourself from the police last year point to a conflict of interest.”

Though details of the first accusation were not explained in Wangethi’s memo, I went through my records and I found out that on December 21, 2006, I placed an advert that appeared in the Daily Nation the next day seeking additional employees for my tour firm. I paid for the advert and the receipt is available. How that contravened my terms of employment remains a puzzle to me.

On the second issue, the said “facts” are a complete distortion of the truth. In 2005 (NOT LAST YEAR), the Kenya Police advertised it was selling by public auction all unclaimed vehicles and all the vehicles on sale were published in the Kenya Times and subsequently advertised in the Daily Nation two times.

I had not seen the first advert but I saw the other two in our newspaper. My first cousin who deals with second-hand vehicles placed a bid for three vehicles and won. After he paid for them, things took a different turn. I first knew that he had tendered for the vehicles when he came to see me at Nation Centre.

He told me that he had been called by the auctioneer and told that several senior police officers and the wife of a top policeman at police headquarters were interested in one of the three vehicles he had paid for. He had two options; either to get a refund of the cash or he accepted an offer of another vehicle. I then called the then CID Director, Joseph Kamau, and he asked me to send my cousin to him. Mr Kamau intervened and the vehicle reverted back to my cousin.

As it’s his tradition, he registered the three vehicles under different names of his wife and relatives. From the first transaction to the last one, the vehicle Wangethi is referring to bears the names of my cousin’s wife. She is also the legally registered owner of the vehicle. As per the law, each of the persons who bought the vehicles which had been sold were issued with an original letter from police headquarters confirming the sale deal was done in accordance with the law and the letters stated
cleared who the buyers of the vehicles were. The letters were on the Kenya Police letterhead and were signed on behalf of the police commissioner, Maj Gen Hussein Ali, by a senior officer. The same letter was sent to KRA, which the buyers used to register the vehicles.

Nowhere does my name appear in the transactions, the sale documents, the receipt for issuing number plates or the log book.

At the time the transactions were going on, Kamau and Maj Gen Ali were at loggerheads. The senior officers who failed to buy one of the three vehicles my
cousin bought found out that I had intervened and they found an opportunity to fix me. The issue came at a time when crime had skyrocketed and various efforts by Maj Gen Ali to prevail upon me to censor major crime stories and to down play the coverage of crime and security matters had flopped. He had called me to his office several times but I refused to tone down. The first time was when we exposed the killings in Ngong and Ongata Rongai. Then came October 2005 when police shot dead four people in Kisumu during the referendum.

Maj Gen Ali was not amused when we exposed they had killed school children and not rioters as he had claimed. He also wanted me to down play stories on murders and bank robberies and the row between him, Kamau and Michuki. His idea was that I should channel out PR stories on his achievements. I started briefing Wangethi about these issues from 2005 and initially, he was on my side. But along the way, he jumped to the other side and matters reached a climax last year when
I wrote a story on three senior officers who had been short-listed for the job of CID Director.

Although the commissioner issues a statement, full of abusive language, and was categorical the story was total lies and my own imagination, my forthrightness and the accuracy of my sources were vindicated two weeks later when one of the three people I had mentioned in my story as having been short-listed for the job was appointed to the post. When Wangethi got Maj Gen Ali’s statement, he wrote some stupid comments on top and accused me of manufacturing stories. He further claimed the reputation of NMG was at stake because of my stories. But when they story turned out to be true, Daily Nation boasted about how the Sunday Nation had broken the story in an exclusive report, when Mr Gatiba Karanja was appointed CID chief!

Neither Wangethi nor his friend Maj Gen Ali offered any apology for the insults they had hurled at me.

Hence, the opportunity to arm-twist me came when Maj Gen Ali stumbled upon the information about the vehicle. He quickly contacted Gitahi through Rose Kimotho just a week after the NMG Board made an announcement that he would take over from Mr Kiboro. By then, Gitahi had more than a month to report to Nation Centre. It’s for this reason that Gitahi called me on the very first day he came to Nation Centre supposedly to pledge his support for me and to commend me for my superb performance. The hypocracy in his statement came to pass when I met him in his office on Thusrday afternoon.

Gitahi and Wangethi used forced information on the vehicle provided to them by Maj Gen Ali and Koskei to plot my downfall for their selfish and personal interests. I would be happy if they came out in the open to declare why they desperately want protection from Maj Gen Ali.

Maj Gen Ali first told Gitahi that I had been given the vehicle by Kamau to influence my coverage of crime stories. He also claimed Kamau gave me a lot of money.

I personally wrote to Maj Gen Ali and challenged him to come out in the open and offer proof of his wild allegations, but he never did. When that failed, he then introduced a new angle to the vehicle and claimed the buyer was my sister.

In order to clear my name and to help Koskei in his investigations, I personally brought the original documents of the vehicle including the newspapers that carried the advertisements for the public auction.
>
Nowhere does my name appear in the documents. I gave the same documents to Gitahi. I also presented Koskei with a voluntary detailed report explaining the issue
of the vehicle.

Yet, Gitahi, Wangethi and Koskei have opted to twist the facts to suit an intended objective – to portray me as a dishonest person not suitable to hold any position at Nation Media Group.

The facts are there but they choose to sweep them under the carpet. It’s my honest opinion that I did not use my position at NMG in conflict with company rules and regulations.

The events leading to my departure relates to a story I wrote two weeks ago on the sharp rise in extra-judicial killings. Gitahi fumed over the story even before he knew the background behind the story.

He told Wangethi he disliked the story. Out of fearing Wangethi, Odindo instructed Bernard Nderitu to ensure that any analysis I did on crime and police were referred to him (Odindo) and Wangethi. I saw this as a deliberate move to frustrate my work so that I could be rendered non-performing and give Wangethi a reason to fire me.

This is why I went to see Gitahi on Thursday to explain the background of how the story was published in the newspaper. Despite the many assurances Gitahi had given me that he supported me and my work, I found a different Gitahi on this day.

He quickly summoned Aluanga, Hellen Mbugua, Wangethi, Odindo, Nderitu and Koskei to his office and turned the meeting into a lynch forum. The genuine issues I
had raised were bushed aside and the issue of the vehicle and my tout firm took centre stage. A memo was hurriedly crafted and Wangethi was then instructed to
sign it. Now that am out of the way, Gitahi and Wangethi can sit tight and suppress crime stories as they wished to please their master, Maj Gen Ali. I have no regrets for the good work I did.

Which is the worst crime? Muiruri owning a tour company and intervening on behalf of my cousin or the beasts that have been accused of turning Nation Centre into a brothel? As I asked in my resignation letter, I ask again; WHO ARE MY ACCUSERS?

For your own consumption, I wish to inform you that Wangethi and NMG were sued by Kiunjuri, Makwere and Midiwo after they twisted facts in my story and
identified them as the MPs who had been arrested in a swoop on Koinange streets.

During a series of pre-trial meetings, Wangethi, Odindo and myself have been holding with lawyers over the court case, the issue of integrity was raised by the lawyer. The lawyer warned us that our integrity would be thoroughly torn apart if we stood in the dock in court to accuse other people of engaging in prostitution when we knew we had skeletons in our cupboard or a dark past. Although Wangethi had initially accepted to stand in the dock, he developed cold feet and flatly refused to be a witness when the lawyer make the shocking revelation. Despite pleas from the lawyer that the position of NMG would be badly weakened if he refused to testify, Wangethi has completely refused to testify. Instead, he pushed Odindo to take his role. I have no problem to stand in the dock and I’ll do so to save Odindo.

It was amusing to see Wangethi shedding crocodile tears during the Thursday meeting of editorial staff, pleading innocence and making denials. I think he broke down because his conscience was tearing his heart into pieces and not because he was innocent.

Why did he develop [cold feet] to take the dock if he is as CLEAN as he wanted us to know? I dare him to take the dock and defend NMG in the case if he stands by his theatrics on Thursday. The guilty are always afraid.

Colleagues, I’m not bitter for leaving NMG and neither do I have regrets. I’m bitter because lies were used to force me out although I have risked my life for the sake of this great company. Unlike what the likes of Gitahi and his sidekicks thought, am not going into the wilderness. I had prepared well for my future because NMG is not the beginning and end of life. Do they think people should die if they left NMG?

Sadly, the answer is no.

I wish everyone of you well. Thanks for all the support each one of you has given me for the past 11 years I have been here.

This letter was first posted HERE