Ann Kathure Rutere, a Kenyan businesswoman with deep ties to South Sudan, is once again under fire. A group of Kenyan workers she recruited for jobs in Juba say they are stranded without pay, unable to cover basic needs or buy tickets home.
They claim she promised steady work and salaries that never arrived. Weeks and months later, they remain stuck, appealing publicly for the Kenyan government and embassy to step in.
This is not the first time such complaints have surfaced against her. Earlier placements of Kenyans abroad allegedly followed the same pattern: recruitment, travel, then silence on wages.
The latest cases have revived scrutiny of her past role at Trinity Energy Limited, a South Sudanese oil firm where she served as executive director and held a stake through its parent company.
A 2023 investigation by The Sentry detailed serious red flags around a $30 million trade finance deal Trinity Energy struck with Afreximbank in 2018. The report described large facilitation payments, including roughly $125,000 paid to a government loan committee that approved the arrangement, cash loans to senior officials, and fuel supplies to the South Sudanese army and a sanctioned general during active conflict.
Investigators also flagged money transfers from Trinity Energy to Kenyan companies linked to Rutere, including RAK Media, which she founded. Some payments were labeled as fuel purchases even though Trinity already had an established supplier, raising questions about the true purpose of the funds.
Rutere has denied wrongdoing in the past, saying she was not involved in day-to-day operations and was unaware of any bribery. She later sold her stake. Yet the pattern of Kenyans placed in South Sudan under her recruitment efforts only to end up unpaid continues to surface. For the workers now stranded in Juba, the history is not abstract.
They simply want the salaries they were promised and a safe way home. Their public appeals have put fresh pressure on Kenyan authorities to examine both the unpaid wages and the older financial trails that investigators previously recommended for further inquiry.
The silence from official bodies so far has left the workers with little choice but to keep speaking out.
