Dennis Oliech has been a household name for Kenyans
He was among the first Kenyans to play football for international clubs years back and was a key figure for Kenya’s national team, Harambee Stars.
Years back after retiring from professional football and returning to Kenya, he became a subject of debate after his financial muscle became depressed.
He was bashed for failing to be prudent in the use of his money especially when he signed with Gor Mahia in 2019 after a lustrous international football career in the Gulf.
Oliech recently came clean and asked Kenyans to spare him the bile saying that his mother and brother’s sickness left him drained.
He told Mozzart Bet in a recent interview that his late mother’s illness, Mary Auma Oliech left him financially drained.
He added that his brother Kevin Oliceh who was batting cancer also left him with a heavy financial burden that forced him to sell off assets he had bought at the peak of his international football career.
“I was doing this to treat my mother and brother. My mother’s hospital bill came to around Ksh40 million and we had to pay around Ksh84 million for Kevin’s bill,” he said adding “you cannot hold on to an asset and your relatives are ill and need your help.”
Oliech’s mother died in 2018 after a long illness. In August 2020, his brother Kevin Opiyo Oliech died while receiving cancer treatment in Germany.
Before landing a football scholarship in the US, Kevin played for Mathare United.
Oliech said that though he has regrets on bad decisions he made at the peak of his career, he had no much of a choice when it came to his family.
He adds that he should have asked for help from Kenyans but he decided to do it his own way.
Oliech also confessed that he invested in the entertainment sector which gobbled up a lot of money and plunged him into losses.
He launched Fishborne Entertainment whose focus was reggae music but it ended up folding and in loss.
“I loved reggae music and I still do. I figured out I could turn out my passion into a business since i had access and connections to high profile reggae artistes and that is how Fishborne was founded,” he narrated.
“I paid a lot of money to bring artistes such as Richie spice, Morgan Heritage amongst others to perform live in Kenya but the business never broke even due to lack of sponsors and good partners.”
“Back then reggae music was associated with the ghetto youth and criminals which was not good for business but right now reggae music is played in most entertainment joints daily. It has become really huge, not just in the ghettos like before. So yeah, it was a brilliant idea, but wrong timing. I wish I did that now.”
