Gakuyo Real Estate and its affiliate Ekeza Sacco are back in the spotlight again. This is after the government moved to deregister the Sacco over it claimed as consistent missing of its stipulated mandate and objectives.
The sacco was deregistered under the the co-operative societies act.
Gakuyo real estate scam
Last year, Gakuyo was accused of defrauding over 7,000 aspiring home owners.
The saga all started following a beef between Gakuyo and popular Kikuyu presenter Njogu wa Njoroge. While appearing at Njogu’s former station Kameme FM, Gakuyo accused the former employee of failing to honour payments for several plots he acquired from Gakuyo. He further alleged that he had been bailing out Njogu from numerous women whom Njogu had gotten into trouble with. Gakuyo further alleged that Njogu was bitter because Gakuyo had refused to take advertising to his new station. Njogu then went on his Facebook page and counter accused the director of Gakuyo Real Estate.
Incidentally, Njogu is alleged to have been a previous vocal marketer of the Gakuyo deals, and his former show at Kameme is said to have been widely sponsored by Gakuyo.
However, according to the Standard newspaper, aspiring home owners who have invested close to Sh. 3 billion at Gakuyo might be staring at another major real estate scam.
The property firm’s 2015’s audited financial records show that aspiring home owners had cumulatively saved Sh. 316.5 million with Gakuyo.
Apparently, to join the housing scheme, prospective home buyers are required to deposit a minimum of Sh10,000 as booking fee. Once this is done, they can now start saving continuously with the sacco under the scheme christened Gakuyo Zero Deposit (G zero D) programme. Currently, A little over Sh100 million has been paid by the buyers as booking fees alone, an amount Ngari described as too small for his interest.
“I have many parcels of land where I will eventually build thousands of homes for all the poor people who registered with me,” he told the Standard, adding that he had enough money to put up 5,000 homes as promised but warned it could take more than three years to complete. The initial promise was 12 months.
The property firm has been running aggressive real estate advertisements mainly in Gikuyu vernacular media stations.
It promises to offer cheap home ownership methods to Kenyans who cannot otherwise afford to buy or build their own homes.