This One Petroleum (owners of MT Paloma dirty fuel which fetched Mohammed Jaffer billions) statement is riddled with self-serving distortions, omissions, and outright misleading framing. Here’s a point-by-point response;
POINT 1 — “Ministry convened a meeting on stock positions”
✅This is framing designed to make everything that follows look like a government-driven emergency. It obscures the critical question: who lobbied for that meeting, and who had cargo already en route? The timing of the MT Paloma’s positioning near Kenyan waters relative to this “industry meeting” is a core investigative thread.
POINT 2 — “Ministry wrote requesting bids for emergency cargo”
Classic procurement laundering. An “emergency” invitation to bid, outside normal @EPRA_KE and @PPRAKenya procurement frameworks, is not a legal shield — it is itself the scandal. Emergency procurement cannot waive quality standards. The Consumer Protection Act protects consumers regardless of what emergency a supplier claims.
POINT 3 — “Shipment owned by British Petroleum heading to Angola”
This is the most brazen claim. It needs immediate forensic scrutiny:
✅Vessel tracking records for MT Paloma’s actual route
✅Whether BP has any record of owning this specific cargo
✅Why a BP cargo “heading to Angola” was conveniently divertible to Kenya within 3 days
✅This reads like a laundering narrative to give the off-spec cargo a respectable pedigree
POINT 4 — “Waiver was applied for and granted by Ministry of Trade… product met standards from 2019 to mid-2025”
Multiple lies packed into one paragraph:
✅Who applied for the waiver — One Petroleum or the Ministry? If One Petroleum applied, they knew it was off-spec before supplying it
✅”Met Kenya’s own standards from 2019 to mid-2025” — Kenya raised its standards precisely because substandard fuel was damaging engines and public health. Citing the old, discarded standard as justification is an admission, not a defence
✅The waiver process itself — who at Ministry of Trade signed it, under what authority, with what consumer impact assessment? EPRA’s enabling statute does not grant Cabinet Secretaries unilateral power to waive fuel quality protections that exist for consumer safety
POINT 5 — “Co-mingling is standard global practice”
A deliberate deflection. The issue is not co-mingling per se — it is:
✅What was co-mingled with what
✅Whether consumers were informed
✅Whether the resulting blend met the standards in force at the time of sale
Normalising “off-spec imports happen everywhere” does not discharge liability under Kenya’s Consumer Protection Act, which imposes strict standards regardless of global practice.
POINT 6 — “20% collected before new policy directive… we withdrew invoices voluntarily”
This is a tacit admission that:
✅Substandard fuel entered the Kenyan market and reached consumers (that 20%)
✅They are claiming moral credit for stopping after the scandal broke — not for never having started
✅”No legal obligation to comply” is a legally reckless statement — EPRA’s regulatory authority and the Consumer Protection Act imposed obligations regardless of the Ministry’s revised “policy directive”
POINT 7 — “We have fully cooperated with all authorities”
Standard boilerplate that means nothing without specifying: which authorities, what investigations, what documents were produced, and whether COFEK’s constitutional petition and demand letters have been responded to.
