Kenyan who served as councillor in UK facing extradition
A Kenyan man who was once elected as a councillor in the United Kingdom is fighting extradition.
Mr Daniel Munyambu, who failed in his bid to be elected to the House of Commons this year, will know his fate this week.
According to the Echo newspaper, the former Basildon councillor was remanded on August 7 when he appeared in the Westminster magistrate’s court.
The case arose when Kenyan authorities requested the UK to return Mr Munyambu to the country to face fraud charges.
He is accused of using his company, Clickett Traders, to con several Kenyans in car importation deals.
Police in Nairobi arrested him in March 2012 over what they said was forgery of receipts valued at £18,000 (about Sh2.37 million at the time), on various occasions from 2008.
He was eventually charged with fraud. However, after obtaining bail, he went back to the UK.
SUSPENDED
The Labour Party, on which Mr Munyambu had been elected councillor, suspended him.
In an earlier interview, Mr Munyambu said the fraud case was politically motivated.
“It was a set-up aimed at stopping me from climbing the political ladder. They said I was in Kenya and committed fraud while my passport shows I was in the UK during that period,” he wrote to the Nation in an email.
“A human being cannot be in two places at the same time. This is injustice that some Kenyans go through and I am capable of bringing it to an end.”
Back in Kenya, Mr Munyambu’s brother Simon Kamau told the Nation on Sunday that the politician left the country in 2012 because his lawyer was handling the case.
“He would be dismissed as councillor if he continued with his stay. He left Kenya after giving instructions to his lawyer to clear his name,” Mr Kamau said, unaware that his brother was in remand.
Mr Munyambu went to the UK in the early 2000s to join his wife. In 2011, he garnered 52 per cent of the votes cast in Basildon ward. He later declared himself a Labour Party activist until he was suspended from the party.
He contested for the Parliamentary seat in Thurrock as an Independent candidate but lost.