There are ambitious plans to build a seven-star hotel in Nairobi, to be called The Prince. The Ministry of Lands has granted a 50-year lease on the land to Galaxy Walker Ltd, the company behind the planned development, which is to include a shopping mall, furnished apartments, executive offices and a parking lot designed to accommodate 1,000 cars. The lease was granted more than a year ago, but its existence has only just been made public.
A controversial feature of the new lease is that the annual rent for the 4-acre prime real estate is just Sh1.6 million ($24,000), whereas the annual rent for the same property under the previous lease was Sh6.3 million ($95,000). Perhaps the Ministry of Lands felt it was justified in offering concessional rental because of the substantial benefits the new buildings would bring. But many people have other suspicions.
The man behind the new lessee, Galaxy Walker Ltd, is none other than Kamlesh Pattni, the man widely said to have been the architect of the Goldenberg scandal, Kenya’s largest ever theft of public funds, in which politicians and businessmen conspired to steal public funds amounting to some 10 percent of the country’s annual GDP. Mr Pattni was arrested but soon released, and no-one has ever been held to account.