Abubakar Abdulahi Mohammed has now tried to leave Kenya twice in under two weeks. Both times he was, on paper, a man facing active court process over an unpaid debt exceeding Ksh 1 million. Both times, sources familiar with the case say, the system bent just enough to let him get close to the tarmac.
The question this case keeps circling back to is not whether Mohamed owes the money. It is who, inside Kenya’s security apparatus, keeps making sure he doesn’t have to stay and answer for it.
A Business Deal That Soured
Mohamed, a Saudi national, entered into a commercial arrangement with a Kenyan businesswoman to export meat to Saudi Arabia. Several consignments went out.
Then, according to the businesswoman’s account, the payments stopped leaving a debt now put at over Ksh 1 million.
She sued. Mohamed initially ignored the summons outright, appearing only after media coverage of the dispute made his absence from court conspicuous. That alone should have settled the matter as a straightforward civil claim. Instead, it opened onto something considerably murkier.
The Arrest That Wasn’t Treated Like One
On 21 July, immigration and police officers intercepted Mohamed at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport as he attempted to board an outbound flight. He was arraigned before a magistrate and this is where the case starts to look less like ordinary debt litigation and more like a study in selective enforcement.
Sources say prosecutors did not flag him to the court as a flight risk, despite the fact that he had just been caught trying to leave the country.
No application was made for a travel ban.
No request was made to have his passport held by the court or by investigators. For a man who had already shown, in the clearest way possible, that he intended to leave Kenyan jurisdiction, the omission is difficult to explain as routine oversight.
What is alleged to have happened next is the part that turns a debt dispute into a governance story: sources say Mohamed’s passport was returned to him after the Divisional Criminal Investigations Officer received a letter directing its release, reportedly invoking “orders from above.”
This publication has not independently verified the letter or its origin, and repeated attempts to get security officials on the record phone calls, messages have gone unanswered.
That silence is itself notable in a case where the basic facts (an active civil suit, a flight-risk arrest, a passport release) should not be difficult for officials to confirm or deny.
The Second Attempt
Reliable sources indicate Mohamed made a further attempt to leave the country on 1 August barely ten days after his JKIA arrest and arraignment.
If accurate, it suggests the return of his passport was not a bureaucratic mishap but functioned exactly as intended: as an exit route.
Who Is Alleged to Be Behind It
Two figures recur in accounts of how this case has been managed: a well-connected businessman based in Eastleigh, and a senior official within the security docket. Both are alleged by sources to have influence over how Mohamed’s case has been handled from the passport’s return to the apparent reluctance of prosecutors to treat him as a flight risk in the first place.
Neither has been reached for comment, and neither is named here without on-the-record confirmation; that is a gap this case still needs closed, not a detail to be glossed over.
Why This Is Bigger Than One Unpaid Invoice
What makes this more than a private commercial grievance is the pattern: an arrest, a documented flight attempt, a prosecution that failed to flag the obvious, and a passport handed back on the strength of an unattributed instruction “from above.”
Ordinary debtors in Kenya do not get that kind of institutional courtesy.
They get warrants, travel bans, and, often, extended pretrial detention over far smaller sums.
The businesswoman who supplied the meat is still waiting to be paid. Meanwhile, the man who owes her is reportedly still trying to leave and appears to have had help doing it.
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