Taxi driver arrested, cash recovered in probe on Sh94m heist

 

Wells Fargo Cargo van ready to transport money. [File, Standard]

Police have arrested a taxi driver and recovered a car believed to have been used by two employees of a security firm who vanished with Sh94 million in Nairobi last Monday.

According to the police, the suspect has been identified as a taxi driver in the Ruiru area.

He was arrested after a raid in his home in Kamaki area in Ruiru, where police recovered the vehicle that was captured on CCTV cameras being driven from the South C area on the day of the cash heist.

When detectives arrived at his house at 3am Saturday morning, they found the colour of the car in the process of being changed.

According to investigators, CCTV footage revealed that the arrested man was the one who drove the vehicle from Lang'ata road and had been captured by several cameras as he drove across the city.

At the time of the arrest, a new set of number plates different from the original plates had been mounted on the vehicle. At the same time, an amount of cash that police could not reveal was recovered from the suspect. 

According to the police, at 6am on Monday, the two staff sneaked the truck loaded with cash out of the company's Nairobi offices. It is the two armed Administration Police officers assigned to them who later raised alarm.

Police in Lang'ata were mobilised to pursue the fleeing suspects, and the empty company vehicle was found abandoned in South C.

DCI boss Mohammed Amin has already published the names of the two missing men, a crew commander and his driver. He said he has formed a special team to hunt for the staff and recover the cash

Detectives from the elite Operation Support Unit (OSU) based at the DCI headquarters, together with officers from the Nairobi area Crime Research and Intelligence Bureau, have been tasked to hunt for the missing suspects. 

This heist comes three years after another incident in 2020 where a man said to be the mastermind behind a Sh72 million ATM cash theft was shot by police under controversial circumstances.

Wycliffe Odour, the man said to have masterminded the theft, was shot and killed by police in Kayole. At the time, police in a statement said Oduor was fatally shot after a botched robbery in Nairobi's Kayole junction.

IPOA at the time announced that it had opened investigations into the shooting of Odour, the man said to have masterminded the Sh72 million bank heist.