Sh1.3bn fraud: Senior Ministry of Lands official released on bond
The Court of Appeal has suspended the hearing of a dispute over an 18-acre parcel of land, which is being claimed by a former provincial commissioner, pending the determination of an appeal filed by two businessmen.
A senior Lands Ministry official has been released on bond after spending more than five days in custody on charges of conspiring to defraud a businessman of a Sh1.3 billion piece of land in Loresho, Nairobi.
Mr Andrew Kirungu, an assistant director land administrator, was ordered by a Nairobi court to pay a Sh5 million bond or an alternative cash bail of Sh1.5 million to secure his release.
Mr Kirungu was charged last week with conspiring to defraud Ashok Rupshi Shah and Hitenkumar Amritlal Raja of an 18-acre plot of land on Lower Kabete Road valued at Sh1.3 billion.
The official was arraigned alongside former provincial commissioner Davis Nathan Chelogoi, who is still at large and for whom a warrant of arrest has been issued by the court after he failed to appear in court for plea-taking.
The two are accused of procuring the registration of the disputed land by falsely claiming that it belonged to Mr Chelogoi. The charge sheet states that they committed the offence on various dates between December 9, 2020 and June 4, 2021.
Abuse of office
Mr Kirungu was also accused of causing the fraudulent registration of Certificate of Title L.R. No. 18485 1.R. No. 232908 by abuse of office.
Mr Chelogoi has been fighting for the ownership of the land since 2009, but lost the battle when the Environment and Land Court ruled that the land had been grabbed by the late businessman Jacob Juma in 2008.
The court ruled last year that Mr Juma, who died in May 2016, fraudulently obtained documents for the land, which is valued at Sh500 million.
Justice Loise Komingoi then directed Juma's widow - Ms Miriam Wairimu - to compensate Mr Shah and Mr Kumar Sh50 million as damages for trespass.
The court ruled that Mr Juma had illegally occupied the prime piece of land and denied the rightful owners the enjoyment of their property.
Mr Chelogoi later sought to quash the decision, arguing that he had been condemned without being heard, but his application to reopen the case was rejected. He was, however, allowed to join the case for the purpose of filing an appeal.
Mr Shah and Kumar went to court in 2009, arguing that Mr Juma had fraudulently taken over the land, fenced it off and built security houses to prevent them from accessing it.
The former PC claimed he had been allocated the land by former president Daniel Moi in 1995.
But investigations later revealed that Mr Kirungu had helped Mr Chelogoi fraudulently obtain the registration.
Following last year's ruling, Mr Ashok said he later discovered that Mr Chelogoi had made a separate claim to the land using fraudulent documents.
Through his lawyers, Macharia Mwangi & Njeru Advocates, Mr Ashok said he applied to the Ministry of Lands to reconstruct the records, only to discover that the records had been tampered with by unscrupulous persons.
This includes an application to subdivide the property into 29 plots.
