NAIROBI (AFP) — Kenya has sold a luxury hotel to a Libyan company to recover billions of shilling it lost to a tycoon in a corruption deal 15 years ago, the finance ministry announced Friday.
The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) sold Nairobi's five-star Grand Regency Hotel for 2.9 billion shillings (44.9 million dollars, 29 million euros) after Kenyan tycoon Kamlesh Pattni relinquished its ownership to settle a graft case.
"The hotel has been sold for 2.9 billion shillings, but it was valued at 2.1 billion shillings (32.5 million dollars)," Finance Minister Amos Kimunya told a press conference.
Kimunya did not name the Libyan buyer but said the transaction was done this week.
Pattni, who handed over the hotel in April, was accused of siphoning around a billion dollars from the CBK in the 1990s under a compensation scheme for export of non-existent gold and diamonds.
The government had tried to take over the hotel for the past 15 years in a bid to recover its lost cash. In 2004, the hotel was also valued at 2.1 billion shillings.
The parliamentary finance committee is probing the sale since the hotel was undervalued. It summoned Kimunya to explain the transaction.
"We want him to come and tell us what he knows because it will help in the investigations we are conducting," the committee chairman Chris Okemo told a press conference.
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