Media tycoon SK Macharia has lost a multi-billion shilling land battle against President Uhuru Kenyatta’s cousin, Ngengi Muigai, after the National Land Commission (NLC) found that forged documents were used in a land transaction that took place 20 years ago.
Mr Macharia, former Land PS JG Kibe and businessman Solomon Wilson Karanja used forged documents to illegally amalgamate a 94.8 acre piece of land with another measuring 4.7 acres before selling the property to Kenya Reinsurance Corporation (Kenya-Re) for Sh550 million in 1997, according to an August 4, 2016 ruling by the NLC tribunal.
The three were Mr Muigai’s business partners and were at the time of the transaction co-owners and directors of Sceneries Limited — the company that bought the 94.8 acres from the estate of former President Jomo Kenyatta in 1988 for Sh500,000.
The NLC tribunal declared the 1997 sale of the land to Kenya-Re null and void, saying the 4.7 acre parcel that was part of the transaction property was Karura Forest land.
Investigations by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) found that Mr Macharia, Mr Kibe and Mr Karanja, who sold the land to Kenya-Re to the exclusion of Mr Muigai, had forged title documents to show that the two parcels had been amalgamated.
The DCI investigators had in July 2015 written to the NLC and Mr Muigai’s lawyers confirming that the title deed used in the sale to Kenya Re was forged, terming it a “Kirinyaga/River Road title, which was pure fraudulent”.
Consequently, the NLC tribunal in its ruling ordered that the fake title be nullified, and the 94.8 acres that the trio co-owned with Mr Muigai be reinstated to Sceneries, subdivided and Mr Muigai given his portion.
“L.R. Number 216/8 measuring 38.39 hectares or 94.86 acres is reinstated to Sceneries Limited. Thereafter, it should be subdivided into four equal portions of 23.715 acres each such that the portion held by the directors of Sceneries that purported to sell L.R. Number 12236 (the amalgamated land) to Kenya-Re when it did not exist, is transferred to Kenya Re,” the NLC said in its ruling.
– BUSINESS DAILY
