Regulator raids illegal Lavington-based international calls bureau

The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) on Thursday raided an apartment in the posh Lavington neighbourhood and seized telecoms equipment that was being used to operate an international calls bureau. 

The Lavington raid follows a similar one carried out in December at the 680 Hotel in the Central Business District CBD.

The regulator says the illegal international call services are costing legitimate phone companies hundreds of millions of shillings, while posing a security risk to the country.

The police, jointly with the officers of the CA, found 3,017 Orange SIM cards, 2,678 Airtel SIM cards, 52 Yu branded SIM cards and 80 Safaricom SIM cards as well as four Voice over Internet GSM equipment that can hold together 144 SIM cards at a time.

According to the CA the arrested individual was operating an illegal business since and faces charges of operating an illegal communications system, contravening section 24 of the Kenya Information and Communication Amendment Act.

Those found guilty are liable to a fine of Sh1 million or five years in jail or both, a penalty that mobile firms like Safaricom have termed as too lenient and not enough to deter malpractice.

Francis Wangusi, the CA director general, said the firms and individuals involved in the illegal international voice terminations are making hundreds of millions of shillings per year, denying the government tax revenue.

“In this particular raid (Lavington) we are yet to establish how much revenue the people involved in it were making, however, in the 680 Hotel raid we established that the firm was netting over Sh38 million per month,” Mr Wangusi said.

READ: Regulator seizes illegal equipment in raid on 680 Hotel based bureau

“We are liaising with other government agencies such as the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) to make the penalty stiffer so as to deter this illegal business since the current penalties are lenient.” 

Sim-boxing involves termination of international traffic using illegal routes. The perpetrators use what is known as simbox, a device that holds stacks of SIM cards on one side and is connected to the Internet on the other side.

Instead of international calls coming in through the traditional international gateways, these operators receive the calls through the Internet and then using the simbox, re-originate the calls through the stacks of SIM cards as if they are being originated by local customers.

“We wish to call upon the mobile operators to put in stringent control mechanisms in the distribution of their respective SIM cards and monitor activities from individual base stations to isolate such base stations that exhibit unusual traffic volumes in order to identify and help in eliminating the SIM box activities,” said Ngene Gituku, the CA board chairman.

Because of the high international termination charges, the unscrupulous traders re-route international calls through the Internet and dump them on the local networks disguised as local calls, cashing in on the termination price margins.