It is the end of an era for the famous Double M buses. This end will be sour though as the company that has been running Double M buses will be sold on auction over debt. Express Connections will also see its 1.767 acre land situated along Jogoo Road put under the hammer.
On Monday, Philips International Auctioneers advertised for the auction the property owned by the company to recover a bank loan of an undisclosed amount.
By 2010, the fleet of Double M which plies the CBD-Buru Buru route, had a total of 150 buses.
The bus company was started by the late John Mugo Mwangi, who died in December 2011 leaving the management of the company to the wife Ms Mary Wangari-Mwangi. It is reported that the company’s declined started after Mugo’s death.
A few years ago, Wangari was engaged in a fierce battle with Easy Properties, that she accused of building a substandard hotel despite having pocketed Sh. 168 million, which she had borrowed. The hotel, a four-storey building, was to house 80 rooms targeting travelers using the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Mrs Mwangi’s Double M is said to have secured a Sh. 120 million that one bank is said to have wired to Easy Properties’ bank account on January 17, 2014. It was not immediately clear if this debt is part of the unpaid loans which the company will be auctioned for.
Why I left good money on the table during a job negotiation
Arbitration documents in May 2016 showed that Mrs. Mwangi was claiming Sh. 268,092,357 from the contractor. In her claim, Mrs Mwangi listed a number of faults on the structure: “The building is such that when it rains, water flows into all the walkways and some of the rooms, as well as into the lift area. The gutters collect rain water and direct it all to the parking area, which consequently floods and becomes impossible to walk or park vehicles. The building is full of cement strips and unevenness all over the points where cracks had appeared … which makes it aesthetically unpleasant,” she said.