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Kenya: The Real Fight for Grand Regency
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Business Daily (Nairobi)
ANALYSIS
22 April 2008
Posted to the web 22 April 2008
Albert Muriuki And Morris Aron
On Nairobi's Loita Street, the Libyan flag flies high atop the five-storey Embassy building, perhaps a sign of the country's passion to get a foothold in Kenya's oil and business sector. The stakes are high.
Across the street is the Grand Regency Hotel, a landmark institution that symbolises greed, theft and corruption - the hallmark of the Kanu regime.
The Libyans want the hotel as part of their bid to entrench themselves into Kenya's business sector and so do the Indians.
Diplomatically, the Libyans have an upper hand - or so they believe.
Last month, when the country was in the thick of a political stalemate, President Kibaki flew to Kampala meet Libya's President Muammar Gaddafi who was commissioning a new mosque.
In diplomacy circles, that was a signal that the Libyans have got to the heart of Kenya's presidency.
Libyan oil merchants are in town looking for contracts and seeking to elbow out other investors in a pull-and-push game that has seen Indians - who were after the lucrative oil refinery in Mombasa - cry foul.
Eight years after they re-opened an embassy in Nairobi - which was shut in 1987 after the Moi regime accused the embassy officials of espionage - the Libyan oil merchants want to have a footprint in the region and are keen to edge out competitors.
Like the emerging story of the Grand Regency Hotel, the entry of Libyans - and the fight for lucrative tenders and business space - is opening new battle grounds.
Indian, Chinese and Libyan companies are taking advantage of a political stand-off between the Kibaki regime and British companies which were previously the main beneficiaries of such high level transactions.
At the Grand Regency, a group comprising Libyan investors trading as Libyan Arab African Investment Company is pitted against another one of Indians who recently bought a vacant plot next to the hotel.
The Indian group boasts of the fifth richest man in the world, Mr Mukesh Ambani, who early last month partnered with an Arabian real estate firm, Arrow Webtex, to form Delta Resources Limited and bought a number of plots close to the hotel.
One of the deals included the purchase of a parking lot next to Grand Regency at a cost of Sh1.4 billion from the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) in the country's biggest property deal so far this year.
Arrow Webtex has also reportedly bought another parking lot between Barclays Plaza and Nyati House, where it plans to build a number of top-end hotel and shopping malls, creating a "city within a city" around the hotel complete with modern shopping centres, casinos and other entertainment services.
The investors also recently bought into Gapco oil and have other interests in the country.
Once a virgin green zone, the land between Uhuru Highway and Loita Street has been the bastion of speculators who got the land in the mid years of the Moi Government and it is there that the Indians and the Libyans will start their fights.
And a cabal of local interests have joined the fray, questioning the authenticity of documents regarding the hotel sale.
A document supposedly written by businessman Kamlesh Pattni's lawyers but which do not have his signature, states that one of the pre-conditions for the hand-over of the hotel to CBK is the sale of the property to a pre-determined investor.
President Kibaki on a recent trip to Libya.
According to the document, the hotel was to be sold jointly by the Central Bank and Mr Pattni to a buyer free of any encumbrances at market value and determined by two reputable valuers.
Wetangula, Adan, Makhoha and Company, Mr Pattni's advocates, through Mr Ahmed Adan told the Business Daily that the reports were fraudulent and that the advocate firm had not issued such a document.
"I can confirm to you that we have not written any such a declaration," said Mr Adan.
The law firm accused politicians who are against the repossession of the hotel and "people who are interested in the deal," as being behind the document.
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"The people behind this are shameless corrupt people with up to 20 cases in court," said Mr Adan as he showed the Business Daily what he said was the declaration signed by Mr Pattni before the handover of the hotel to Central Bank.
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