Google has reportedly fired its Kenya country manager, Olga Arara-Kimani, over a fraudulent use of Mocality’s data.
Nairobitech reported:
“The Google Mocality saga has drawn its first casualties. Kenya country lead for Google, Olga Arara-Kimani formerly of Safaricom has been let go by the company. Also axed is a technical guy in Zurich… It is not clear how Olga was picked for the fall but as one observer noted, sometimes a sacrificial lamb has to be found for the brand name to weather the storm.”
Update after the jump.
Nelson Mattos, who had earlier made a statement expressing the company’s mortification over the situation, released a bland, generic statement yesterday.
“We’ve concluded our investigation into the serious allegations about our use of data from Mocality’s website in Kenya. We’re very sorry this happened. We’ve taken appropriate action with the people involved and made changes in our operations to ensure this doesn’t occur again.”
A Google global PR representative, who insisted on talking to ReadWriteWeb after our first post on the subject, assured us that we would be given a full rundown of the investigation after it was complete. Last night, we were told Mattos’s post was Google’s only “on-the-record” statement. Not sure, if the comments on Mattos’s Google+ page are representative, that this was the right tack to take.
We’ll let you know if they reverse course and make a further statement, as some African tech blogs are reporting.
Update: Kenyan newspaper The Nation reports Ms. Arara-Kimani has claimed to have left of her own accord.
“‘I confirm I have left Google Kenya. As the leader of the Kenya office, I felt that the buck stopped with me and I decided to leave,’ she wrote in a phone message to the Nation on Monday.”
Other sources: TechMTAA
