A Kenyan blogger Daudi Were has raised an interesting question about whether the U.S. government will be willing to enforce the Kingpin Act against Facebook for apparently doing business with a Kenyan national John Harun Mwau who had earlier this year been designated as a drug lord under the Kingpin Act (See White House Press Release).

The Kingpin Act denies significant foreign narcotics traffickers, their related businesses, and their operatives access to the U.S. financial system and prohibits all trade and transactions between the traffickers and U.S. companies and individuals.

Daudi makes some interesting observations in his post titled “Facebook Should Unfriend Mwau”:

In other words Kingpin Act targets, on a worldwide basis, significant foreign narcotics traffickers, their organizations, and operatives by making it illegal for any U.S. company or any U.S. individual to conduct any financial transactions with them.

Daudi further elaborates:

Facebook is a social networking service and website operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Facebook, Inc was founded in 2004 and is based in Palo Alto, California. It is a U.S. company. Ownership of Facebook, Inc is shared between Mark Zuckerberg, Accel Partners, Digital Sky Technologies, Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital Partners and Microsoft amongst others. Most are U.S. citizens and U.S. companies.

Remember that U.S. companies and U.S. individuals are forbidden from any financial transactions with narcotics traffickers named through the Kingpin Act. The fines for ignoring the Act range from USD 1 million to USD 10 million and there’s also the not very little matter of the possibility of 30 years imprisonment.

Last night I started noticing adverts on Facebook for John Harun Mwau’s Facebook page. The text for the ad reads:The text for the ad reads:

Success and Wealth are but a state of mind. Discover the principles that guided me to Success on My Facebook Page.