In a labyrinthine manoeuvre that raises fresh questions about transparency in Kenya's lucrative fuel import sector, the Odinga family has transferred its 35 percent stake in oil marketer Be Energy to a shell company registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI)—a jurisdiction the Tax Justice Network ranks as the world’s number one corporate tax haven.

The shareholding, previously held through the Odingas’ investment vehicle Pan African Petroleum Limited, now resides with Africanable Corporation, incorporated in the BVI. Regulatory filings at Kenya’s Business Registration Services confirm the transfer, though they remain silent on whether this constitutes an outright sale or a mere asset reallocation. A veil of zero-tax secrecy now conceals what was once a publicly traceable stake in one of the country’s fastest-growing fuel companies.

The timing is incendiary. Be Energy has emerged as a direct beneficiary of the government-to-government (G-to-G) fuel import deal signed with Saudi Aramco, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and Emirates National Oil Company in March 2023—a scheme that supplanted the open tender system and has since been plagued by governance failures. An Auditor General’s report flagged that KSh 47.26 billion paid to oil marketing companies under the fuel stabilisation programme was “unsupported,” citing a complete lack of oversight mechanisms, planning structures, or clear governance frameworks. Over USD 19.85 million was recovered through pump prices without board approval, and KSh 954.65 million in legal fees were buried in consumer pricing cycles with no disclosed beneficiaries.

Critics argue that such opacity is precisely the point.

“This is crony capitalism in its purest form,” said a Nairobi-based governance analyst who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. “You have a politically connected firm—one whose owners include the family of Kenya’s most prominent opposition figure—securing a slice of a multi-billion-shilling import deal, then immediately offshoring its ownership into a jurisdiction designed to block scrutiny. The message to Kenyans is clear: your fuel bills fund a system where profits are privatized and accountability is outsourced.”

The British Virgin Islands, a British Overseas Territory, offers a zero-tax environment with no corporate income tax, no capital gains tax, and no dividend tax. The Tax Justice Network’s December 2025 Corporate Tax Haven Index gave the BVI a perfect haven score of 100 out of 100, describing it as “the world’s biggest enabler of global corporate tax abuse”. The BVI also recently missed a key deadline to implement public beneficial ownership registers and was placed on the Financial Action Task Force’s “grey list” for deficiencies in combating money laundering.

The Odinga family’s ownership structure, before the offshore transfer, was itself a web of interconnected interests. Records show that the late Prime Minister Raila Odinga and his wife Ida each held a 25 percent stake in Pan African Petroleum. Their children—Raila Junior (5 percent), Winnie (5 percent), Rosemary (10 percent)—joined nephew Elijah Oburu (25 percent) and Wenwa Akinyi Oranga (5 percent) in a family-centred ownership model that has now been entirely displaced to the Caribbean.

Simultaneously, Be Energy’s board has been reshuffled. Siaya Senator Oburu Oginga and Raila Junior have departed, replaced by close aides including the late Prime Minister’s lawyer, Jackson Awele, and cousin William Ojonyo. The Odinga family’s fingerprints remain on the company, even as their shares have vanished into the BVI mist.

The majority owner remains the Saudi Arabian tycoon Sheikh Abdul Kader Al Bakri, whose holding company International Energy World S.A. has simultaneously shifted its address from Panama City to Monrovia, Liberia—another jurisdiction known for regulatory flexibility. The Al Bakris hold a 65 percent stake, giving them control while the Odingas maintain a significant minority position now hidden behind BVI incorporation.

Be Energy’s commercial trajectory has been remarkable. According to the Petroleum Institute of East Africa (PIEA), the company held a 3.7 percent market share in 2025, placing it among Kenya’s top-tier second-level oil marketers. The Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) confirms Be Energy recorded total sales of 99.95 million litres in the six months to December 2025, capturing 3.17 percent of the market—sufficient to rank as the seventh-largest oil marketer in Kenya, behind only multinational giants Vivo Energy (Shell), Rubis Energy, TotalEnergies and Ola Energy. The company also exports to South Sudan, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, making it a regional player of growing significance.

The political context adds another layer of complexity. Be Energy became part of the G-to-G supply deal following a surprise political rapprochement between President William Ruto and the late Raila Odinga in 2024, formalised as a cooperation agreement in March 2025. That political handshake opened the door to accusations of crony capitalism—a phenomenon that, as the Kenya Times noted in a March 2026 opinion piece, manifests through inflated public procurement contracts, tax privileges for politically connected sectors, opaque energy monopolies and debt structures that socialise losses while privatising gains.

“What we call ‘free markets’ today is, in reality, a tight web of political patronage, procurement cartels, protected monopolies, and public debt structures,” the opinion piece argued. “That is not enterprise. It is crony capitalism—and it is economically unsustainable”.

The PIEA’s quarterly report for early 2026 notes that emerging players are gaining ground due to competitive advantages driven by scale, supply chain expansion and network growth—advantages that, in Be Energy’s case, appear to have been catalysed by political access rather than organic market competition. Total fuel consumption in Kenya rose by 10.7 percent in 2025 to 6.55 million cubic metres, driven by stable inflation, a relatively steady shilling, and GDP growth of about 4.9 percent. Those macroeconomic tailwinds benefit all oil marketers, but only one has the distinction of being owned by a family that helped negotiate the deal under which it operates.

Questions now multiply. Did the share transfer to the BVI constitute a sale? If so, who bought the stake, and at what valuation? If not, what legitimate purpose does the offshore re-registration serve, given that the family has no obvious need for asset protection or cross-border investment structuring within Kenya’s own regulatory framework?

Be Energy and representatives of the Odinga family have not responded to repeated requests for comment.

The wider implications are troubling for Kenya’s anti-corruption architecture. The government has moved to privatise several state firms, including Kenya Pipeline Company and KenGen, while simultaneously channelling billions in fuel subsidies through opaque mechanisms. A parliamentary committee recently warned that a deal between National Oil Corporation of Kenya and Rubis Energy could “quietly hand over critical State assets to private interests—leaving taxpayers to foot the bill”. In this environment, the offshoring of a politically connected family’s stake in a government-backed fuel importer reads less as prudent estate planning and more as a roadmap for rent-seeking in plain sight.

As Kenyan motorists face rising pump prices—super petrol in Nairobi now retails at KSh 206.97 per litre, diesel at KSh 206.84—they might reasonably ask: whose tank is really being filled? The Odingas’ stake in Be Energy has sailed to the British Virgin Islands. The rest of us are still paying at the pump.