• Devani tried to dismiss the assurance by the Kenyan government that his rights would not be violated in Kenyan prisons.
• But in their ruling dated May 7, 2020, the judges said that Devani the reasons brought forward were not satisfactory.
After more than 10 years in the courts, wanted tycoon Yagnesh Devani has lost his battle his to block extradition to Kenya.
This is after the Court of Appeal in London dismissed his last attempt to block deportation on human rights grounds.
Devani, the mastermind of the Sh7.6 billion Triton petroleum scandal, is wanted in Kenya to face fraud and corruption charges.
In his appeal, Devani tried to use a similar claim by 'miracle babies' televangelist Gilbert Deya that Kenyan prisons are deathtraps.
Devani tried to dismiss the assurance by the Kenyan government that his rights would not be violated in Kenyan prisons.
But in their ruling dated May 7, 2020, the judges said that Devani the reasons brought forward were not satisfactory.
"In this case, specific assurances had been given by senior office holders in Kenya which were accepted by the Divisional Court. In considering this article 3 challenge a court should begin with the presumption that the Republic of Kenya was acting in good faith," the judges said.
Devani had also presented a witness statement by Deya's lawyer and also a news article of the pastor complaining of the conditions at Kamiti Prison.
He claimed that equivalent assurances were given in the case of Deya, and on the basis of which he had been extradited to Kenya, had been disregarded.
But the judges said; "Mr Deya was, to put it no higher, a witness whose reliability was highly questionable. To the extent that the report was based on statements by Mr Swaka, Mr Deya’s lawyer, he was a witness whose evidence had already been held by FTTJ Sullivan to be unreliable."
In the article titled “Insects keep on biting me, says Preacher Gilbert Deya at Kamiti prison”, the pastor accused the government of failing to honour a deal to keep him in a "self-contained cell".
"The article did not undermine the specific assurances given by the Kenyan officials. They are assurances which have been accepted in order to meet the respondent’s challenge that in extraditing Mr Devani his article 3 rights would be breached," the judges said.
In 2011 and 2013, Kenya made extradition requests in relation to serious allegations of fraud against Devani.
Devani challenged the requests but lost at the UK Magistrates Court in a decision that was delivered on September 3, 2014.
He appealed to the High Court and through a decision dated December 11, 2015, the judges dismissed his appeal.
Devani was a director of Triton Petroleum Limited. He is accused of engineering the release of the oil company’s stock of fuel from the Kenya Pipeline Company’s storage tanks without informing the financiers.