Cheating on your spouse? Beware someone is watching

Publisher: Korir, africanpress@getmail.no source.standard.ke

By Isaac Ongiri Two weeks ago the CEO of a blue-chip Nairobi-based company told his wife that he was flying to Mombasa on company business. Instead of heading for the airport, the man drove to Kitengela where he rendezvoused with his girlfriend. They spent the rest of the day and the night drinking and canoodling. His suspicious wife contacted a private eye firm to track down and expose the man. It did not take them long to compile a dossier on the philanderer. Few private eyes goes about their business with the professionalism and tenacity of SpyLink International, a firm started by a former policeman. A growing number of women and men disgusted by their partners’ cheating ways are now using such firms to track them down. Some of the latest gadgets that are used by private eye operatives Jealous and suspicious spouses have been flocking to the private investigator’s offices in Nairobi seeking assistance to catch their cheating partners. Assisted by the latest ICT technology, the SpyLink International sleuths will collect the necessary evidence and present it to their clients. They use psychologists to help them trace the cheats to their romantic hideouts without arousing suspicion. “We know where the cheats hung out and we use our psychologists to pin them down and we follow them all the way,” says John Muriungi, a top SpyLink manager. Prominent personalities in the country are among the people whose wives have sought the help of the private sleuths to unearth their dirty liaisons with women. “Here we help people who come to us,” says Muriungi. “They may not be having any evidence, but we use our expertise to obtain the evidence necessary to pin down a cheating partner.” At the moment two Cabinet ministers, 36 Members of Parliament (some of them women), three permanent secretaries and eight prominent CEOs are being tracked down. Their jealous partners have sought the aid of the sleuths to pin them down and expose their dirty ways. A number of former policemen have been recruited to boost SpyLink’s activities. The company is quickly acquiring a reputation as a ‘hanging noose’ for cheating spouses — and their partners now have a way of proving their suspicions either right or wrong. Using a car and a motorbike to track down their quarry, the SpyLink sleuths rely on cell phones to report progress to headquarters. From the car, the man or woman is photographed and every move filmed. Kitengela, Mlolongo, Hurlingam and Westland areas are named by the trackers as the most popular hideouts for cheating executives. An assignment, Muriungi reveals, is charged depending on the nature of the job. It costs about Sh10,000 for a ‘minor’ assignment within Nairobi’s central business district and up to Sh2 million for a job involving foreign trips. Last year SpyLink signed up a client from Italy who wanted his wife spied on. The woman has been paying frequent visits to the country and the husband suspected that she was up to some hanky-panky at the Coast. SpyLink charged Sh2 million for the job. ” Our business is not about framing anyone, and not everybody being investigated is a cheat,” Muriungi says. “Some may just be merely suspicious and jealous. We deliver the truth to our clients.” The firm is also undertaking pre-wedding espionage for partners waiting to get married. Muriungi says a good number of women and men who are suspicious about those they intend to wed have requested for their services. “Every week we get about five clients who want us to spy on their intended spouses,” he says. “Knowing whether your partner is cheating or not can be huge task, and getting the evidence good to pin him or her down could be a nightmare. That is what we do for our clients,” says Muriungi. An assignment might take months, and starts from the target’s home. He or she is then tracked in different cars and motorbikes all the way to the work place and all movements studied. Case one SpyLink sleuths use micro cameras to record hard-to-get information while miniature microphones are placed in various places to get the audio evidence. Grace* was shocked to be shown a video recording of her husband making love to an Arab woman in Zanzibar. The man had claimed to be on a business trip to Tanzania, but her suspicious wife set spies on him. She paid them Sh300,000 and they tracked down her husband and boarded the same plane with him to Zanzibar. They brought back shocking evidence and, according to Grace, her husband collapsed when she showed him what he had been doing in Zanzibar. A man we found at the SpyLink offices was anxious to have his wife, whom he accused of sleeping with her boss, investigated. “She comes home and behaves in a manner that indicates she has been seeing someone else,” he complained. “I have come here to get the whole truth because she claims to be tired every night,” says Geofrey* The firm has four cars and five motorbikes to deploy when a mission arises. The tracking team often changes cars to ensure that the subject does not get a hint of what is happening. The firm sometimes uses its own staff mainly women, to trap the people being investigated but according to Mr Muriungi, not with the aim of framing the subject. According to Muriungi, most of their clients already know their husbands or wives are cheating and are only looking for confirmation. Wednesdays, Fridays and weekends are the days the company’s spying team is busiest. The snoops told Crazy Monday that it is usually more difficult to track down a cheating woman than a man. “We don’t take long to catch up with cheating, men, but it takes more time and greater evidence in the case of women,” he says. The spies sometimes collaborate with employees of various lodgings and hotels and pay them to put cameras and earphones in the rooms used by the lovers. “We can pay up to Sh 50,000 to a lodging attendant or air hostess to make sure they place our equipment at strategic places to capture the details what we want. Aware that their assignment may end up breaking up a marriage, SpyLink International and other firms conducts counselling for their clients to prepare them for what might transpire. “We have helped a number of couples live together even after knowing the truth about their partners. Our aim is not to break up marriages,” Muriungi told Crazy Monday. With such spying organizations at work, the grass won’t look so green on the other side. * Names have been changed to conceal the identity of respondents

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