PTI
September 1 2003

LONDON: Ketan Somaia, an NRI entrepreneur being investigated by the Hertfordshire police in London for defrauding a German-based businessman of £2.2 million, has been arrested in Kenya as he was trying to board a British Airways flight to London, a media report said on Sunday.

Somaia, a former sponsor of the Miss World competition through his Dolphin hotels, banking and motor trading group, now faces two separate trials in Nairobi, The Sunday Mail, stated

His surprise arrest followed a request for his extradition from Tanzania where he had been accused of defrauding a businessman of £150,000. Tanzania had just closed the local Delphis bank. Instead of being extradited, Somaia was charged with stealing almost £1 million from the National Bank of Kenya in a deal to import London taxis.

Then, in June, Somaia was charged with defrauding a German-based businessman of £2.2 million. He is on bail.

Somaia, who denies all the charges, has been banned from leaving Kenya by a commission investigating a £150 million banking and political corruption scandal involving credits for fictitious gold and diamond exports, the report said.

Besides Tanzania authorities in Uganda and Mauritius have also either made extradition requests for Somaia or started investigations, the report said.

A spokesman of the Hertfordshire Fraud Squad said on Sunday that it began an investigation last year after it was claimed 42-year-old Somaia failed to return an investment of £500,000 in Delphis Bank of Mauritius, which he formally headed.

At the time he was arrested in Kenya, Somaia, who has a mansion near Barnet, north London, was on police bail but had not been charged.

"He is still on bail but we are right at the back of the pecking order," the Hertfordshire police spokesman said.

Somaia was a former business associate of one-time Tory Party chairman Lord Parkinson. Parkinson was chairman of Dubai-based Dolphin Holdings for eight years. He resigned three years ago. Somaia returned to Kenya in March for the first time in ten years.

He was to face a Parliamentary committee investigating £4 million paid for mostly undelivered police equipment in Kenya.