Murang’a senator Irungu Kang’ata has defended the 21-year old student with millions of shillings in her bank account.
This is after student’s bank account was frozen for 90 days, to allow the Assets Recovery Agency(ARA) to investigate the source of the funds.
Felesta Njoroge, a student at the Nairobi Technical Training Institute, is said to have received the Kshs102,654,024 from her boyfriend, Merc De Messel, a Belgian bitcoin billionaire.
Kang’ata defended Felesta saying that it is wrong for the government to go after her like that yet she is not a civil servant.
“The whole endeavour of the government to take that money from the girl is wrong, as long as she is not a public servant. If she were a public servant or a proxy to a public servant, I would support that. These requirements of disclosure need to be there but they should relate to public employees and their proxies,” the senator said in an interview on Tuesday morning.
Kang’ata advocated for the arrest of the treasury, CBK and ARA for publicizing the student’s private information.
“The heads of Treasury, CBK and The Assets Recovery Agency need to be arrested. Kenya is not a socialist or a communist country. The right to privacy when it comes to private money is something that needs to be upheld,” he said.
He said that the government was derailing development and driving away investors by its habit of monitoring private citizens’ money.
“The idea of the government wanting to get money from private citizens on the basis of all these things one needs to do is making Kenya become non-friendly to investors… we are coming up with laws which negate economic development,” Kang’ata said.
According to ARA, Felesta’s Co-operative account was opened on August 2 and the cash was transferred to it in four transactions in three days from August 4.
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