The Kenyan in the Room: How Jeremy Gisemba Became a Principal in South Sudan’s Biggest Tax Heist

NAIROBI / JUBA — In September 2019, as South Sudan was taking its first cautious steps toward mobile money and digital payments, a Kenyan businessman named Jeremy Gisemba sat down with reporters to voice concern about financial crime. He was serving at the time as business development and marketing director for LEM International, an Eritrean-owned trading firm embedded in Juba’s commercial ecosystem. His message was a warning. He told journalists that he did not feel there were currently enough controls in place on mobile money, and that all parties involved need to share anti-money laundering mechanisms, including knowing where the source of the money is coming from.

Within the same twelve-month window, Crawford Capital Ltd. was being contracted by South Sudan’s Ministry of ICT as the exclusive provider of the country’s e-Government services without competitive tender, with the backing of the National Security Service, and on terms the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan would later describe as unjustifiable and indicative of abuse of public office. Jeremy Gisemba would acquire a 26 percent stake in Crawford Capital Ltd. and a 23.4 percent stake in CapitalPay Ltd., the operational platform through which billions in South Sudanese public revenues would flow and from which his company took three-quarters of every dollar before the government saw a cent.

The man who publicly worried about anti-money laundering controls became a principal shareholder in the company that, on May 12, 2026, the United States government sanctioned for siphoning money from South Sudan’s treasury and stealing foreign assistance funds intended to support the South Sudanese people. Jeremy Gisemba, private, unfamiliar to most in Nairobi, and almost invisible in the public record of this scandal, is now formally part of it.

WHO IS JEREMY GISEMBA

Gisemba is not a household name in Kenya or South Sudan. He has cultivated that anonymity deliberately. Unlike majority shareholder Garang Mayom Kuoc Malek — whose face appears in organograms circulated by accountability researchers, whose political lineage as the son of a former deputy minister is documented in UN reports, and who serves as CEO and Managing Director of Crawford/CapitalPay — Gisemba operated in the background. No press releases. No LinkedIn profile generating headlines. No government ministerial appointments connecting him publicly to the scheme.

What the public record does show is a Kenyan national with years of direct commercial experience in South Sudan’s emerging digital economy before he took his stake in Crawford. His 2019 role at LEM International placed him precisely at the intersection of South Sudan’s financial system and its nascent digital payment infrastructure — the same intersection Crawford would occupy exclusively from the same year. He was not an outsider who stumbled into this deal. He was an insider who understood the terrain.

The UN Commission’s September 2025 report, Plundering a Nation: How Rampant Corruption Unleashed a Human Rights Crisis in South Sudan, documents the full ownership structure of Crawford Capital Ltd. with clinical precision. Garang Mayom Kuoc Malek holds 68 percent of Crawford Capital and 61.2 percent of CapitalPay. Gisemba holds 26 percent of Crawford Capital and 23.4 percent of CapitalPay. Ruey Majok Guandong son of South Sudan’s ambassador to Turkey held 50 percent at incorporation before the structure was restructured. The Commission notes that the company’s financial beneficiaries extend further to include political elites and their close relatives, including documented links to Adut Salva Kiir, the President’s daughter.

“The company is owned and run by family members of national political elites. At least 12 government ministries and entities have enabled Crawford’s corrupt activities.” — UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, September 2025

Gisemba’s stake was not a passive inheritance. He is the second-largest shareholder in both entities. At 26 percent of Crawford Capital and 23.4 percent of CapitalPay, his equity position entitled him to a proportional share of every pound, dollar, and South Sudanese currency unit that Crawford extracted under its 75-25 revenue contract with the government. Every crude oil accreditation fee. Every e-visa charge. Every business permit processed through CapitalPay’s portals. Every levy imposed on the humanitarian agencies that the UN found were being taxed in violation of international law.

THE SCHEME HE BOUGHT INTO

To understand Gisemba’s exposure, it is necessary to understand exactly what Crawford Capital did. Beginning with its 2019 contract with the Ministry of ICT a contract the UN Commission found was awarded without competitive tender and endorsed by the National Security Service’s then-Director General of the Internal Security Bureau, Akol Koor Kuc — Crawford was given exclusive control over South Sudan’s e-Government revenue collection infrastructure.

The contract gave Crawford 75 percent of all revenues passing through its platforms. The remaining 25 percent went to the government. This was not a contractor’s service fee. It was a permanent structural diversion of public revenue into private hands. Revenues were held in Crawford’s own private bank accounts rather than channeled through the national treasury. The South Sudan Revenue Authority, which should have been the institution overseeing all of this, was documented by the UN Commission as complicit allowing Crawford’s representatives to collect and hold public funds directly, while the Authority itself was withholding 14.5 percent of collections far in excess of its legal 2 percent cap.

75%  Crawford’s share of every rand, pound and dollar of public revenue it collected

26%  Gisemba’s ownership stake in Crawford Capital Ltd.

192 of 192  UN Human Development Index ranking — South Sudan

$25.2 billion  Oil inflows since independence, before this scandal

In September 2023, Crawford collected fees from international crude oil buyers under a mandatory Electronic Crude Oil Accreditation Permit system. In one documented transaction, Crawford pocketed more than 1.1 million dollars. The Ministry of ICT received approximately 367,000 dollars. In 2022, Crawford received a 10 million dollar advance for purported Ebola preparedness — equal to 80 percent of the entire Ministry of Health’s annual spending — despite the company having already failed on a COVID-19 related project.

In 2024, Crawford implemented a fuel import levy that was extended, in violation of international law, to humanitarian organisations, UN agencies, and diplomatic missions. The World Food Programme suspended critical food aid distributions. The UN Humanitarian Coordinator for South Sudan described the situation as a direct impediment to saving lives. The levy was eventually withdrawn following international complaints, but not before significant damage had been done to operations feeding millions of acutely food-insecure people in one of the hungriest countries on earth.

Jeremy Gisemba owned a quarter of the company doing all of this.

THE REGIONAL DIMENSION: WHY A KENYAN BELONGS IN THIS STORY

Gisemba’s nationality is not incidental to the analysis. Crawford Capital is registered in the United Kingdom. Its principals include British-linked directors alongside South Sudanese-UK dual nationals. The Kenyan Gisemba provides a third jurisdictional thread — East African commercial connectivity that gave the enterprise regional reach and, critically, the plausibility of a legitimate multi-national business operation rather than a nakedly domestic patronage vehicle.

This matters for accountability purposes. Kenya’s Assets Recovery Agency and Directorate of Criminal Investigations have jurisdiction over Kenyan nationals engaged in cross-border financial crimes. The Financial Reporting Centre, Kenya’s anti-money laundering intelligence unit, is legally empowered to investigate suspicious financial flows involving Kenyan citizens operating abroad. The question of whether any portion of Crawford’s revenue stream the company’s 75 percent share of South Sudanese public taxes, fees, and levies passed through Kenyan bank accounts, Kenyan-registered entities, or Kenyan commercial infrastructure is now a matter of pressing national interest for Nairobi.

The US sanctions on Crawford Capital do not name Gisemba individually. But they name the company in which he is the second-largest shareholder, for conduct in which that company’s revenues were generated by the scheme he co-owned. Secondary exposure under sanctions regimes is a well-established legal reality. Any financial institution that continues to process transactions for Crawford Capital, CapitalPay, or their associated entities including transactions involving their shareholders does so at risk of sanctions violation.

THE POLITICAL SHIELD AND WHY IT CANNOT PROTECT GISEMBA

Crawford Capital’s immunity within South Sudan has been underwritten at the very highest levels of the Juba government. When Trade and Industry Minister Atong Kuol Manyang Juuk issued a 90-day review directive in March 2026 citing technical failures, unreliable connectivity, and disruptions to legitimate trade operations she was overruled within days by Vice President James Wani Igga, who invoked a Council of Ministers resolution presided over by President Salva Kiir himself. The minister reversed her directive within eight days. The episode confirmed what accountability advocates had long suspected: Crawford operates under direct presidential protection.

That protection is rooted in ownership. The UN Commission documented that the company’s founders, Garang Malek and Ruey Guandong, previously formed other companies with Mayar Salva Kiir, the President’s son. Investigative reporting by Radio Tamazuj has established that CapitalPay is widely believed to be linked to Adut Salva Kiir, the President’s daughter and Senior Presidential Envoy, whose image appears at the apex of the network structure documented by accountability researchers.

But presidential protection in Juba does not translate into immunity before the United States Treasury, the United Nations Human Rights Council, the United Kingdom’s Serious Fraud Office, or Kenya’s own law enforcement institutions. Gisemba’s protection is political. His exposure is legal. Those are not the same shield.

“The corrupt activities of these individuals robbed critical resources from a war-torn country.” — US Treasury, on earlier South Sudan sanctions designations, a template now applied to Crawford Capital

THE HUMAN COST OF A 26 PERCENT STAKE

Seven point seven million South Sudanese face acute food insecurity. Two point three million children are acutely malnourished. The entire South Sudanese health sector received less than 0.9 percent of the national budget between 2020 and 2024. The Ministry of Agriculture received less than 0.4 percent. The government spent 2.57 dollars per school-age child on education in 2023 to 2024. More than four million South Sudanese are internally displaced or living as refugees in neighbouring countries.

These numbers exist in the same document the UN Commission’s 101-page September 2025 report — as the ownership structure of Crawford Capital Ltd. They are not separate stories. Crawford’s privatisation of South Sudan’s non-oil revenue streams is one thread in the systematic looting that has produced these outcomes. Jeremy Gisemba’s 26 percent stake makes him a shareholder in that thread.

The man who in 2019 told journalists that people need to know where the money is coming from now faces a version of the same question directed at him. Where did Crawford Capital’s revenues come from? They came from South Sudanese taxpayers, crude oil traders, humanitarian organisations, businesses seeking permits, and citizens applying for visas at 75 cents on every dollar, before the government saw its quarter. And where did the proceeds of Gisemba’s 26 percent equity go? That is the question Nairobi, London, Washington, and Juba now have cause to ask him to answer.