By Ayub Mwangi.
The High Court in Nairobi has ordered an overseas recruitment company to pay Kshs 5 Million to an employee they hired for an online scamming company in Myanmar.
Justice Byram Ongaya directed Gratify Solutions International Limited to pay Harun Nyakong’o for deceptively recruiting, transporting, and handing him over to transnational criminal networks
operating scam compounds in Myanmar. Nyakong’o, who returned from Myanmar had told the court that he had been engaged in forced labour and forced criminality to defraud individuals in the United States through online scams.
He told the court that Gratify Solutions International Ltd, Virginia Wacheke Muriithi, Boniface Owino, and Ann Njeri Kihara, orchestrated and facilitated his
trafficking.
The court found that Nyakong’o was subjected to slavery,
servitude, forced labour, inhuman and degrading treatment, and severe violations of dignity and freedom
of movement.
The Court recognized that the trafficking chain originated in Kenya, making the
respondents strictly liable for the harm suffered abroad.
The Court further issued a permanent injunction, barring the company from recruiting, transporting, harbouring, or facilitating the movement of Kenyan workers to foreign countries.
Nyakong’os Advocate, Ms. Lillian Nyangasi, termed the judgment a
groundbreaking legal milestone, being the first known decision in Kenya arising from a case filed on behalf of a victim trafficked to Myanmar for labour exploitation and forced criminality.
She noted that the matter broke new ground by formally recognising the complex nature of contemporary trafficking networks, particularly those operating across East Africa and Southeast Asia.
”The matter placed before a
Kenyan court the full extent of abuses suffered by victims who are lured abroad under false pretences, trafficked through multiple jurisdictions, and compelled to engage in illegal online scamming operations under conditions amounting to slavery and servitude,” she said adding that the judgment therefore set an important precedent for holding recruitment agencies, traffickers, and
complicit individuals accountable within Kenya’s legal framework, while affirming that Kenyan courts can provide effective remedies for citizens harmed by transnational criminal enterprises.
