A 10-year fight pitting a woman against a local bank and a foreigner over seven prime properties in Nairobi’s Riverside estate has cast a spotlight on rogue underhand dealings involved in property ownership in Kenya.
In a civil suit filed in the Environment and Land Court in Nairobi, Ms Rachael Njoki Karumbi, a retired nurse, is seeking to recover a residential villa, four apartments and two flats from their current occupants.
This was after they were allegedly sold illegally by Mr Roger Blade Dyrnes, a Norwegian national whom she describes in court files as her ex-lover.
Ms Njoki says in court papers that she lived and worked in Norway as a nurse for 33 years and was married to the Norwegian man, but the union ended in 1996.
The couple divorced and she used cash from the settlement and her savings to purchase properties in Nairobi with the help of a property and conveyance lawyer.
Her first house was a villa registered as LR Number 4275/105, which she bought for Sh11.3 million in 2001.
When the transfer was finalised, she decided to make the house her residence for use when she visited Kenya on holiday.
To enable her to purchase more properties, her lawyer advised her to open an account with a local bank and she did.
In 2004, she developed an interest in units 1B1, 1B2 and 1B10 at Taj View apartments and eventually acquired them for Sh6 million each when the building was completed the following year.
In 2006, with the help of her lawyer, she obtained a loan from the bank and acquired two more flats on Riverside Drive for a combined cost of Sh19.5 million.
The titles for the two flats and apartment 1B10 were retained by the bank as collateral for the loan.
She says in court papers that rent collected from the other properties was deposited in an account at the same bank account to help service the loan.
In 2007, in consultation with her lawyer, she registered a company called Executive Kiritu Investments Limited, transferred 1B1,1B2 and 2A3 to the company and registered her niece Faith Waithera Munyui as a director, transferring one per cent of the shares to her to help her manage the houses while she was abroad.
In 2011, however, the bank called her niece and told her that it had discharged the title deeds to a Mr Oleg Orlov, who was purportedly in possession of a special power of attorney given to him by Ms Njoki.
This opened up a fight over the properties that have now ensnared the current occupants of the houses.
Ms Njoki, who was in Norway, learnt that Mr Orlov was her former lover using a different name and sought police help to have him arrested in vain.
The properties were sold one by one in circumstances that she says were sufficient to alert the purchasers that the purported sale was irregular and inherently fraudulent.
For instance, some of the houses were sold without their original title deeds, which she still possesses.
They include her villa, Millennium House 23, and Taj Mall apartments number 1B1 and 2A3.
“I have been unlawfully dispossessed of my lawful entitlement. Further, both I and my company have suffered substantial damages like mesne profits for lost rent as claimed in the plan filed herein,” she says.
While court documents indicate that Ms Njoki had not repaid her loan fully at the time her titles were released without her knowledge, Mr Orlov, in his statement, says he sold the properties with her full knowledge after she granted him the power of attorney.
But Ms Njoki denies signing any valid power of attorney in his favour, arguing that if she had done so, she would have donated it in his proper name, Roger Klinge Dyrnes, using his Norwegian passport and not the fake Lithuanian passport and name.
“It is therefore very clear from the foregoing that this was a well-arranged conspiracy to defraud me of my properties that were perpetrated by several people that included Roger Klinge Dyrnes,” she said in her statement.
In May, the lawyer who allegedly signed the power of attorney, Mr Peter Wanono Chunga, told the court that his signature and office stamp were forged on the alleged "power of attorney” document.
“I did not affix the stamp nor sign the power of attorney, neither is the affixed signature mine. I have never dealt with the law firms that drew the power of attorney, I had never met Ms Njoki and Mr Orlov before or heard of the company,” the lawyer told the court when he appeared as the first witness.
“That it (document) implies that they appeared before I, is a complete forgery. I made a formal complaint to the police about the forgery and obtained an OB number.”
On the day the document was signed, Mr Chunga said he was in Garissa attending to his professional duties.
He also told the court that he learnt about the suit when a Nation article reported about a foreigner who had been deported to Norway by Interpol in 2014 after evading justice in his country.
The article revealed how Mr Orlov had fled to Kenya after he and his accomplice were implicated in fraud, racketeering and tax evasion amounting to about Sh551 million in Norway.
While his co-accused was arrested and jailed, Norwegian media reported that Mr Orlov managed to sneak to Lithuania, where he changed his name from Roger Klinge Dyrnes to Orlov Oleg and obtained a fake passport.
Mr Orlov, who also goes by yet another alias, Roger Wilhelmsen, came to Kenya as a fugitive in 2008 and stayed until he was deported with the help of Interpol in 2014.
In Norway, he was sentenced to three and a half years in jail and banned from doing business in that country.
