Oserian ( Masai, "Place of Peace"; locally, The Gin Palace; later, Djinn Palace) is a flower farm on the south shores of

Lake Naivasha Lake Naivasha is a freshwater lake in Kenya, outside the town of Naivasha in Nakuru County, which lies north west of Nairobi. It is part of the Great Rift Valley. The name derives from the local Maasai name ''Nai'posha'', meaning "rough wate ...

Nakuru County Nakuru County is a county in Kenya. It is County number 32 out of the 47 Kenyan Counties. Nakuru County is a host to Kenya's Forth City – Nakuru City. On 1 December 2021, President Uhuru Kenyatta awarded a City Charter status to Nakuru, ranki ...

, Kenya. It is Africa's largest rose producer. Oserian's

wildlife corridor A wildlife corridor, habitat corridor, or green corridor is an area of habitat connecting wildlife populations separated by human activities or structures (such as roads, development, or logging). This allows an exchange of individuals between ...

is more than in width through its property with reaches to the lake; it occupies more than of shoreline.

History

Originally a country estate, the

Moorish The term Moor, derived from the ancient Mauri, is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a distinct or se ...

-style mansion was built in 1927 by Major Cyril Ramsay-Hill, a rancher, former officer in an Indian regiment, and sometime Hollywood actor. It was based on his grandmother's home in

Seville Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula ...

, Spain. The crenellated and domed building features minarets, and contains an "inner courtyard, fountains, squash court, swimming pool, and polo grounds". During the colonial era, "The Djinn Palace" was "where things usually were very lively" for the

Happy Valley set The Happy Valley set was a group of hedonistic, largely British and Anglo-Irish aristocrats and adventurers who settled in the "Happy Valley" region of the Wanjohi Valley, near the Aberdare mountain range, in colonial Kenya and Uganda between ...

, according to Ulf Aschan. It was built for Ramsay-Hill's wife, Molly (née Edith Mildred Maude; 1893–1939), who had an affair with and later married

Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll Josslyn Victor Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll (11 May 1901 – 24 January 1941)Cokayne et al., ''The Complete Peerage'', volume I, p.1337 was a British peer, known for the unsolved case surrounding his murder and the sensation it caused during wartime ...

. In 1969, Oserian was established as a small vegetable growing farm. In 1982, it became the first flower farm on Lake Naivasha.

Tax avoidance

In 2020 it was reported that Dutch firms who were growing cut flowers in Kenya using addresses in Amsterdam to avoid tax on large turnovers. Prof.

Attiya Waris Attiya Waris (born 25 October 1974) is a Kenyan professor at the University of Nairobi and a writer about financing development from diverse perspectives including illicit financial flows and corporate tax reform.She is the current UN Independent ...

who had studied this industry noted they are using Kenyan land but they are avoiding paying for it. Investigators ( Investico) had found by using Kenyan data and the

Panama Papers The Panama Papers ( es, Papeles de Panamá) are 11.5 million leaked documents (or 2.6 terabytes of data) that were published beginning on April 3, 2016. The papers detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 ...

that companies like Oserian were avoiding tax. Oserian was using trusts in Liechtenstein and the British Virgin Islands in 2011 to avoid nearly all tax in Kenya despite a 47 million Euro turnover.

External links

Official website

References

{{reflist, 3 Houses in Kenya Nakuru County Farms in Kenya Agricultural organisations based in Kenya Buildings and structures in Rift Valley Province Houses completed in 1927