Briton Muhammad Asif Hafeez, jailed recently by the US for orchestrating an international drug trafficking empire, had close links with the notorious Akasha brothers in Mombasa.

The New York court convicted Hafeez, aka Sultan, of conspiring to import heroin and hashish into the U.S. He was arrested in the UK on August 25, 2017, and extradited to the US in 2023. 

Described by the US prosecution as a ‘puppet master’ of a global criminal enterprise that stretched across several continents, Hafeez presented himself as a reputable business mogul and had pleaded guilty to the offence.

However, the drug empire of Hafeez, whose prison time is set to lapse in 2033, having been in jail since 2017, started to crumble in 2014 after the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) launched a sting operation in Mombasa. 

According to the video clips played in the US court, DEA agents taped a meeting between him and the Akasha brothers selling 99 kilos of heroin and 2 kilos of meth to a Colombian drug dealer.

Evidence filed in a US court revealed that Hafeez was at the centre of trafficking huge consignments of drugs offloaded and loaded on small fishing boats from Tanzania, Kenya, and Mozambique. 

In a New York court, the prosecution showed a clip showing that Hafeez inspired both reverence and fear in the underground drug world. His associates called him “the Sultan” (ruler), and he was the supplier of unnamed Colombian drug dealers. 

Ibrahim Akasha, the young son of the late Kenyan Akasha Ibrahim Abdalla, untangles nylon paper, pours a white substance onto foil paper, and burns it to demonstrate the heroin’s purity.

Authorities nabbed Ibrahim and his brother Baktash Akasha in the same sting operation. They extradited them to the U.S. in January to face narcotics charges following a New York court indictment on October 28, 2015. 

The two, alongside Indian drug felon Vijayghiri Goswami and Pakistani Gulam Hussein, were snatched away by the US and Kenyan police, who raided Baktash’s seaside home in the high-end estate of Nyali.

According to the indictments, Hafeez conspired with Baktash, Ibrahim, Goswami, and Gulam Hussein to import heroin into the U.S. Baktash was the leader of the “Akasha Organisation”.

Baktash was responsible for the production and distribution of tonnes of narcotics within Kenya and throughout Africa and maintained a network used to distribute narcotics for importation into the U.S. 

“Hafeez supplied the Akasha Organisation’s primary narcotics suppliers, including the late Akasha, who led the Akasha Organisation before his murder in the Netherlands in 2000,” the U.S. stated. Attorney Damian Williams told the court.

However, the DEA and the Kenya police set a dragnet to monitor the trafficking of the drugs that led to the arrest of Hafeez and the two Akasha brothers, Goswami and Gulam.

In October 2014, Ibrahim delivered a kilo of heroin sample, on behalf of Hafeez and the Akasha Organisation, to confidential sources acting at the direction of the DEA in Nairobi.

According to Mr Williams, in early November 2014, Ibrahim delivered 98 additional kilograms of heroin to the confidential sources. During this investigation, Baktash boasted in a recorded meeting that Hafeez had distributed “tonnes” of narcotics with his father and the Akasha Organisation.

It’s unclear whether Baktash and Ibrahim knew Hafeez before their father’s murder. It is clear from court records that Hafeez, Goswami, and the late Akasha patriarch worked together in Mozambique.

Significantly, after an assassin’s bullet felled Mzee Akasha in the red streets of Amsterdam, Netherlands, sibling rivalry almost brought the patriarch’s empire to its knees.

Barely two years after his death, on March 28, 2002, his son, Kamaldin, was shot dead outside his petrol station in Makupa, Mombasa, in a case of fratricide.

The violent feud within the polygamous Akasha clan exposed the Akasha sons’ pursuit to inherit from their father. After Kamaldin was killed and Habab quit the illicit trade, Baktash took over the reins.

However, sources said that Goswami's arrival in Mombasa on November 22, 2012, appeared to have opened a new door for the Akasha sons to rebuild their late father’s empire.

Goswami entered Kenya on a forged Indian passport on November 22, 2012, after serving a 17-year drug conviction in the United Arab Emirates, according to security sources. 

Sources in the security sector assert that Goswami revived the links with the “Akasha Organisation” led by Baktash.

Like Hafeez, Goswami employed a game of deception, presenting himself as an accomplished businessperson or investor across Africa. In Mombasa, Goswami enjoyed police protection.

In Mombasa, he lived with a gorgeous Bollywood actress, Mamta Kulkarni, as his mistress at the affluent Nyali estate. He was close to a former principal secretary and an MP who guaranteed him protection.

During an interview with this reporter in 2017 at Mombasa Port Police cells, he got permission to hire armed bodyguards because his life was under threat and he needed to be protected.

He also claimed that he was a marked man by the Indian government, which piled pressure on Kenya to extradite him to India for trial. He did not state what offence he had committed in India.

The media-shy Goswami admitted that he was jailed in the UAE after his conviction for drug trafficking and manufacturing, although he alleged that he was framed.

In a startling revelation, Goswami told us then that he entered Kenya via JKIA in 2014 as an investor and had even travelled to Rwanda and India. We could not independently confirm the claim.

“They (immigration officers at JKIA) knew my record,” said Goswami in an admission that his conviction in India was a matter of public notoriety that Kenyan officials knew.

Sources in the security circles, however, insist that Goswami entered Kenya on a forged Indian passport on November 22, 2012, after serving a 17-year drug conviction in the United Arab Emirates.

Why did he come to Kenya?

In an interview, Goswami claimed he had known the late Akasha for 26 years when he lived in Zambia. Goswami said he and the late Akasha invested in a mining business in the southern African nation.

Goswami claimed he came to Kenya in 1994 after Zambia deported him, but did not state why. He added that in the 1980s, he passed through Kenya but did not explain from where or to where.

Other reports indicated that Goswami fled Zambia and South Africa, where authorities investigated him for murder, drugs, and racketeering, before he ended up in Dubai, where a court convicted him.

Although the late Akasha reportedly introduced the narcotics trade to his arsenal of businesses in the 1970s and 1980s, he embodied a contradiction of the good and the bad.

Other reports indicate that Goswami's and Hafeez’s arrival in Mombasa sparked wars among competing drug cartels, allowing the DEA and Kenyan detectives to infiltrate them.

For instance, according to court records, in December 2016, Baktash and Ibrahim fought with a prominent businessman in a Nyali club; someone drew and fired guns.

The businessman reportedly walked into the club and confronted the Akasha brother and Goswami, who were having drinks with his friends, including the PS, MP, and an elegant woman, before the fight broke out.

The U.S. detectives claimed that the PS and MP received money from Goswami, the Akasha brother, and Hafeez in early January 2017 for protection.

During these wars, a DEA sting operation in Mombasa netted Goswami, Baktash, Ibrahim, and Gulam. By Bernard Sanga, The Standard