Chapter Four - Crimes In Kenya

September 6, 2021·47 min·4 clips

Mark Kielburger secretly recorded his top Kenya employee discussing bribes, death threats, and criminal offenses.

The call begins at night. Mark Kielburger is about to speak with Peter Ruiu, his longtime employee and the country director of WE's Kenyan charity operation. Peter sounds panicked. The tape is messy, but the host leaves little doubt about Peter's fear: he thinks the organization is in real legal trouble. Santai's name keeps coming up. Peter wants him to take the blame. Peter runs through the risks. Bank accounts could be frozen. Police, immigration, and tax officials could be pulled in. The media could be alerted. He calls the violations criminal offenses. In that moment, the person with the most power is a bureaucrat the host says has their lives in his hands. Peter then suggests a meeting. He says he will arrange it with Steve and corrupt NGO board officers, and Mark should attend. Santai has to be disavowed. If that goes right, Peter says everyone can walk away clean. The turnaround is fast. By the next month, Santai has been flown to Canada and the NGO board has changed course. The charity is declared fully compliant. The public does not hear the panic on the tape, the legal exposure, or the private plan laid out on the call. Then comes WE Day. Mark Kielburger appears on national television with his brother and members of the Muppets, while the harder questions stay offstage. WE challenges the recording's use and context. Its lawyer says the recording was illegally obtained. WE later gives another context, tied to a 2017 spot check of operations. The chapter ends by widening the frame: the next installment points to an Internal Revenue Service complaint asking for WE charities and Free the Children to be investigated for fraud in the United States.

As heard by us

A panicked call and the quiet machinery of damage control.

It opens with a late-night call that lands with the strain of a crisis, not a routine check-in. Peter Ruiu, the country director of WE's Kenyan charity, sounds rattled as Mark Kielburger presses for an explanation, and that uneasy back-and-forth gives the segment its drive.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for the taped call that turns a charity crisis into a legal threat.

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