K24’s The Bench host Jeff Koinange’s recently published book, ‘Through My African Eyes’, is causing a bit of a stir not least because it has revived discussion about the woman, one Marianne Briner-Mattern, who made the allegation of professional fraud and assault against Koinange that got him fired from CNN.

MARIANNE BRINER-MATTERN MAKES ‘DATE RAPE’ ALLEGATION AGAINST KOINANGE

Marianne Briner-Mattern, a Swiss-German woman (sometimes referred to as Swiss-Italian), who over the years has made numerous allegations against high ranking Kenyans including President Moi, Prof Saitoti, Nicholas Biwott, Raila Odinga and Gor Sunguh, is the same ‘Marianne Briner’ who in 2007 (then aged 66) alleged that Jeff Koinange (then 41), at that time working for CNN, had assaulted her and doctored a report from Nigeria by paying bribes to ‘put on a show’.

Jeff Koinange was subsequently sacked from CNN, more it seems for using official computers to carry on an e-mail exchange with Briner-Mattern than anything else. The lurid details carried in the emails are too explicit for the Kenya Forum to reproduce.

MARIANNE BRINER-MATTERN: A WOMAN SCORNED?

In reality, what happened was that Jeff Koinange had some sort of relationship with Briner-Mattern but, it seems, would not take her latest allegations over the murder of Dr Robert Ouko to CNN (because he didn’t believe them) and did not promote a book she was writing as she had wished, in particularly failing to get her an interview on the Oprah Winfrey show.

Briner-Mattern, as has happened often before, turned on her one-time friend, invited Jeff Koinange up to her room to discuss the matter and then executed one of her standard plans: no witnesses and accuse him of “date rape”. She then wrote to CNN Worldwide President Jim Walton and released her email correspondence with Koinange on a blog site. Result: Jeff Koinange lost his job (and no doubt was in hot water with his wife) – revenge achieved.

Jeff Koinage however, was just another unlucky man in a long line of Briner-Mattern’s victims.

MARIANNE BRINER-MATTERN: “A DANGEROUS WOMAN”

Gitau wa Njenga, a Kenyan journalist based in London at the time of the Koinange allegations, said: “I nearly suffered a similar fate as Koinange after a brief encounter with Marianne” and described her as, “a dangerous woman”.

“INTIMATE” WITH MOI?

Brinner-Mattern also claimed to have had a “relationship” with former President Moi from which she derived “intimate” knowledge.

Peter Makori, also a Kenyan journalist, at the time of the allegations against Jeff Koinange working for a US website, said: “When she implicated Moi, many Kenyans did not believe her earlier claims against other ministers… because she came out as a sex predator targeting top guys in government”.

“STAR WITNESS” IN OUKO MURDER INQUIRY

The fact that so many of Marianne Briner-Mattern’s allegations over the years can be proved to utter nonsense did not stop her becoming Scotland Yard’s and Gor Sunguh’s Parliamentary Committee’s “star witness” over claims she made regarding the murder of Dr Robert Ouko. Nor, however, where they in turn immune from becoming the target for Ms Brinner-Mattern’s allegations and anger.

SCOTLAND YARD ‘COVER-UP’

Before the Scotland Yard detective John Troon, brought in by Moi to investigate Ouko’s murder, had even completed his investigations in Kenya in 1990, Briner-Mattern had written to his senior officer, “basically accusing myself and the Kenyan authorities of a cover-up”, he told the Gicheru Commission of Inquiry on 14 November, 1991.

GOR SUNGUH PARLIAMENTARY SELECT COMMITTEE ‘PAY OFF’?

Even as their “star witness” Briner-Mattern also turned on members of Gor Sunguh’s Parliamentary Committee accusing some of them of accepting a $465,000 ‘pay off’ according to an article in The Sunday Standard published in May 2005, which also alleged that, ‘according to correspondence, the money is also to be used to hire activists, including some members of the Law Society of Kenya, to agitate for the arrest of former President Moi and Biwott’ (Sunguh denied the allegation).

SHAM COMPANY, CONVICTED BUSINESS PARTNER

Troon and Sunguh should have known better. They both received plenty of undeniable evidence that Marrianne Briner-Mattern’s company, ‘BAK’, which had been brought in by Dr Ouko to help with the revival of the Kisumu Molasses project, was a sham.

BAK wasn’t a properly incorporated company until, would you believe it, it was finally incorporated on 13 February, 1990, the day that Ouko was murdered, after which Brinner-Mattern’s claims for compensation over the Molasses project rose from $150,000 to $5,975,000. BAK however, seems never to have actually traded.

As for Briner-Mattern’s business partner in BAK, one Domenico Airaghi, he was proved to have been a fraudster who was out on bail at the time of their dealings with Ouko after having been convicted by a court in Milan in April 1987 (a decision upheld by a Court of Appeal in April 1991). Again, Troon and Gor Sunguh ignored this evidence.

THREATENED TO SUE PUBLISHER

Part of Briner-Mattern’s scheme at the Parliamentary Committee’s investigation was to publicise her book ‘A Shining Star in the Darkness’ but this too did not end happily either. Briner-Mattern accused the book’s publisher, a Mr Sam Okello, of ripping her off and threatened to sue him, subsequently publishing the book free online (the printed version sold only a handful of copies).

Okello, who subsequently wrote the book ‘The Night Bob Died’, has since publicly stated that he has seen new evidence to completely change his mind on the subject and no longer believes Brinner Mattern’s testimony (nor does he now believe Moi, Saitioti or Biwott had anything to do with Ouko’s murder).

BRINER-MATTERN TURNS ON RAILA ODINGA

Briner-Mattern also turned on Raila Odinga, ‘apparently unhappy with Raila for including a certain cabinet minister whom she did not like, in a delegation that she said was to meet her in Switzerland to discuss the revival of the controversial Kisumu Molasses plant’. As a result she claimed to have ‘scuttled’ Odinga’s chances of becoming Kenya’s third president.

“HER ENTIRE STORY MAY BE A FAKE” – RAILA ODINGA

Raila Odinga reportedly told the East African Standard that Briner-Mattern had written to him when he sought to revive the Molasses plant and that she said she would introduce him to useful contacts to assist him. However, he said that their correspondence did not amount to much, but she was later to demand money from him in what he thought amounted to extortion. “If that is what she is saying,” Raila said, “then her entire story may be fake.”

So nervous of the Brinner-Mattern woman and the allegations she made did Odinga become that in his autobiography (written with Sarah Elderkin) ‘Flame of Freedom’, she is referred to as ‘Brenda Bremmer-Martens’. Meanwhile, Gor Sunguh (at one time married to Raila Odinga’s niece) and the Parliamentary Committee is not mentioned at all, not once in the entire book, even though both the subjects of the Gicheru Commission of Inquiry into Ouko’s death and the saga of the Kisumu Molasses project (now owned by Spectre, a company part-owned by Odinga) were accorded a whole chapter each.

LIVES RUINED – THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH DIVERTED

The ever-changing and totally unreliable testimonies over the last 25 years of Ms Marianne Briner-Mattern have ruined lives, and in the case of the Ouko murder, diverted investigations that might otherwise have revealed the truth as to who really murdered him and why, wasting in the meantime vast amounts of time and (Kenya taxpayers’) money.

The Kenya Forum feels sorry for Jeff Koinange over Brinner-Mattern’s sociopathic allegations. The truth about this woman should have been reported by the Kenyan media years ago

Related Kenya Forum articles:

Marianne Briner-Mattern: president Daniel Arap Moi’s mistress?

Marianne Briner-Mattern: destroyer of Raila Odinga’s presidential bid?

Ouko Murder: Samuel Moroto MP wanted Gor Sungu to face questions

‘Raila Odinga, The Flame of Freedom’ with Sarah Elderkin: Missing links and memory loss