Company records and procurement data have pointed to links between Ying Du and senior figures in the Kenya Kwanza administration. A quiet Sh322.5 million transfer from the Kenya Tea Development Agency Holdings accounts to a Chinese-linked supplier has blown open deep fractures inside the farmer-owned tea giant and drawn the full weight of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations.
Detectives are now digging into how public money belonging to hundreds of thousands of smallholder tea growers was released for an expired contract that the board’s own legal advice and an overwhelming majority of directors had already rejected.
The payment went to Oriole Homes Ltd on 18 May 2026. Oriole is the most active arm of the Sanjiu Group, controlled by Chinese entrepreneur Ying Du.
The firm had already been paid the full contract sum of roughly Sh9 billion for supplying 99,000 tonnes of NPK fertiliser delivered and accepted in August 2025.
Five months later, on 28 January 2026, Oriole returned with a fresh demand for another $2.5 million, claiming foreign-exchange losses caused by delays between May and August 2025.
Those delays, the company said, stemmed from court challenges to the tender award and amounted to force majeure.
KTDA’s own company secretary and legal team disagreed.
Currency fluctuations do not qualify as force majeure under the contract. More critically, the agreement had already expired and could not be amended or varied after completion.
Former national chairman Geoffrey Chege Kirundi told the board the same thing: the loss, if it existed at all, was ordinary commercial risk that a party to an international deal must bear.
Investigators looked at documents which showed that 11 of the 12 directors were against the payment. Kirundi’s own objection was not even on the tender board minutes.
But the money departed KTDA Holdings’ accounts in May.
Timing couldn’t have been worse.
By February 2026 the board was already under increasing financial pressure with delayed and reduced tea bonuses, an investigation by the National Assembly into the bonus payments and the necessity to restructure loans to prevent default. Farmers were hurting already.
Another Sh322.5 million has now been sent out the door to a foreign supplier whose main contract had long been shut. Five current and former officials have been summoned: Kirundi, legal officer Mathew Odero, company secretary Esther Osoro, finance official Tarsila Wanja and group head of procurement and logistics Peter Mugai
Nairobi Area DCI chief Daniel Kandie ordered them to produce certified copies of the contract, every set of board and tender committee minutes that authorised the payment, and the financial records showing exactly how the funds left KTDA Holdings.
They appeared, handed over documents, and await fresh interview dates. No one has yet recorded a statement. Current national chairman Enos Njeru, who took office after the payment was made, has distanced himself completely. “The best person to speak about it is the former chairman since he was the one in charge,” he told journalists, declining even to confirm the transfer.
Kirundi, for his part, will only say the matter is under investigation and that he will speak when detectives finish their work.
In a July letter to Njeru he insisted the official minutes must accurately reflect his opposition and the legal advice the board received.
Ying Du’s rise through Kenya’s public procurement system has been rapid and broad. Oriole Homes, registered in 2013 and wholly owned through layered structures under the Sanjiu Group umbrella formed in 2023, has secured multiple state contracts beyond the KTDA fertiliser deal: a Sh1.25 billion upgrade of Koitalel Samoei University Campus, a Sh2.4 billion NSSF-linked redevelopment in Kisumu, and even smaller tenders such as refrigerated milk coolers for the State Department of Livestock that are ordinarily reserved for disadvantaged groups.
Company records and procurement data have pointed to links between Ying Du and senior figures in the Kenya Kwanza administration.
The fertiliser tender itself was contested by the previous supplier, SLDR International, which alleged an opaque and discriminatory process before eventually withdrawing its challenge.
The pattern is clear.
A Chinese-controlled firm completes a multi-billion-shilling supply contract, receives full payment, then extracts an additional nine-figure sum for currency movements that legal opinion said were not recoverable, against the recorded opposition of nearly the entire board, while the agency responsible for the livelihoods of more than 700,000 tea farmers struggles with cash-flow pressure and public scrutiny over bonuses.
Detectives are now asking the only question that matters: who authorised the payment, on what authority, and whether the decision crossed from poor governance into criminal conduct.
Tea farmers have already lost hundreds of millions in previous dubious deals inside KTDA. This time the paper trail is fresh, the legal advice is on record, and the money is still warm. The DCI has the documents. The rest is only a matter of time.
