10 September 2024 , 19:51
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Kenya’s high court temporarily blocked a proposed deal for India’s Adani Group to lease the country’s main airport, court documents showed. The proposal sparked protests in Kenya and raised concerns in India over the country’s image.
In their petition, the Law Society of Kenya (LSK), the country’s main bar association, and the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) said that the Adani proposal is “unaffordable,” “irrational” and threatens job losses.
The joint application told the court that the country could independently raise the $1.85 billion required to upgrade the airport, but under the Adani proposal “the risk of illegality and wastage of public funds looms large.”
The court issued on Monday a temporary suspension prohibiting anyone from implementing or acting on the Adani proposal pending the conclusion of the court case, LSK President Faith Odhiambo wrote on X on Monday evening. The case will be mentioned on October 8 to get a judgment date.
“There’s no value for money in the project,” Ochiel Dudley, the lawyer leading the case, told OCCRP on Tuesday. “It exposes the taxpayer to too much risk.”
The case was framed after OCCRP revealed the details of Adani Group’s proposal worth US$2.5 billion to lease Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) for 30 years on July 24. This was approved by the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA), even after experts had advised the Kenyan government to put out a public tender to expand the airport. There had been no public hearings surrounding the proposal, which had been approved to a “development phase.”
LSK then tried multiple times to obtain documentation on the deal from the Kenya Airports Authority, but were unsuccessful. There has been immense public backlash to the deal, even in India.
Currently, there have been suspicions that the deal is already going ahead. On August 30, Adani Enterprises set up a Kenyan subsidiary “Airports Infrastructure PLC (AIP)" according to a filing with the National Stock Exchange of India in Mumbai, seen by OCCRP.
“There’s talk that the deal has already been signed,” Dudley said. “If it’s already signed, it’s been signed illegally because it can’t be signed throughout the due diligence.”
A letter sent from the airport workers union to KAA on September 2 said that employees had seen Adani employees moving around JKIA in the company of KAA senior security personnel. Last week, sixteen top Kenyan officials also departed for India on a “due diligence” mission on Adani Holdings’ financial records.