The Kenyan-born Pattni is the expert in smuggling gold worth millions of dollars while avoiding detection.
His company, Goldenberg International, was at the center of a massive scandal in the 1990s that cost Kenya $600 million, or 10% of its GDP.
When the East African nation was under a Western aid embargo, then-President Daniel Arap Moi had permitted Pattni to export Kenyan gold.
Instead, it is claimed that Pattni utilized his authorization to transport gold from the Congo through Kenya. He was accused but never found guilty.
Pattni has relocated his activities to Dubai and is now smuggling gold from all around Africa, mostly from Zimbabwe, according to undercover reporters for Al Jazeera.
From his headquarters in Dubai, Pattni, who later self-identified as a preacher and occasionally goes by the name Brother Paul, is currently operating a similar scam in Zimbabwe.
The information was revealed as part of Al Jazeera’s Gold Mafia, a four-part investigation on some of the biggest gold smugglers and money launderers in Southern Africa.
Pattni provided many choices to undercover Al Jazeera reporters posing as Chinese criminals in order to launder more than $100 million.
In order to do this, he would convert the illicit funds into gold, which is then shipped from Zimbabwe to Dubai, where Pattni is the owner of a number of gold trading firms.
