Deputy President William Ruto yesterday welcomed the disclosure of his properties by Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i, saying that the lifestyle audit should now be extended to other leaders.
He spoke as questions began to emerge about how the DP acquired some of the properties listed by the Interior CS after the Nation found out that a number of them might have changed hands under questionable circumstances.
According to a search the Nation did on some of the properties, ownership records have vanished from the Registrar of Companies, while two of the mentioned large tracts of land were controversially acquired from state agricultural agencies.
Additionally, most of the mentioned properties have been acquired during the Jubilee party’s term in office and they are owned through proxies.
While meeting political leaders from Nakuru at his official Karen residence yesterday, the DP admitted that he owns most of the properties listed by the Interior CS.
He also threw a jibe at the Office of the President, saying it has assisted him in doing a lifestyle audit, something that the media has been asking for all along.
DP Ruto reacts to CS Matiang'i's responses on change of his elite guards
“They have answered all the questions that people have been asking. For a long time, it was the newspapers who were auditing me,” said the DP.
“The people from the Office of the President have improved on what the newspapers have been saying. They have removed some of the things people claimed I owned like 680 and Boulevard Hotel,” he said.
Among the properties listed by Dr Matiang’i on Wednesday, the DP owns the 976-acres Murumbi farm in Trans Mara, 15,000 acres at Mutara farm in Laikipia and 2,536 acres at Mata Farm in Taita Taveta County. The Interior CS also said that the DP owns the 102-bed Dolphin Hotel in Shanzu, Mombasa, and the 120-bed Weston Hotel on Lang’ata road in Nairobi.
Additionally, the CS said the DP owns Kitengela Gas, three homes – one each in Karen, Nairobi, and Elgon View and Kosachei in Eldoret -- plus a poultry farm in Koitalel, Uasin Gishu county. The DP also owns five choppers through Kwae Island Development Ltd, which operates as KIDL Helicopters, from its two hangars at Wilson Airport.
“They also forgot to say that I have 400,000 shares in Safaricom and 80,000 shares in Kenya Airways. If there are police officers guarding these shares they should have said so,” said Dr Ruto, while adding that those who did a lifestyle audit on him should now move to the next person.
“They didn’t say that I have 200,000 chicken at my farm and that I sell 150,000 eggs a day at Sh1.5 million. In conclusion they should have gone to the bank and found out how much money I have and if there are loans I am servicing,” said the DP.
The beach front Dolphine Hotel in Shanzu, Mombasa while it was under construction on August 17, 2018.
Photo credit: File | Kevin Odit | Nation Media Group
Despite the DP not denying that he owns KIDL, Kitengela Gas, Weston Hotel and Dolphin Hotel, we could not find their ownership records on the government’s online search portal for the Registrar of Companies.
Dolphin Hotel, according to an Environmental Impact Assessment done by the National Environment Management Authority (Nema) in 2018 for a planned renovation, listed Weston Hotel Ltd as its owner.
Weston has been fighting in court to save its premises from being demolished by the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA), which says the company fraudulently acquired the land that the hotel stands on. The case is currently being heard at the Court of Appeal.
“Out of the 10 properties they said I own, 70 percent is true, the rest are lies. Like they said I have 10,000 acres of Agricultural Development Corporation (ADC) land which is not true,” said the DP yesterday.
Although we could not immediately establish who between the DP and Dr Matiang’i was saying the truth about the ADC property in Laikipia, court records show that the corporation had issued out some of its land in the area to private individuals in a questionable manner.
Weston Hotel in Nairobi.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
The land in question, LR No. 10069, also known as Mutara Ranch in court papers where ADC was accused of irregularly handing it out to private individuals, is listed as a special farm under ADC rules of 2001.
The corporation, however, leased it to Woragus Ltd on December 10, 2015. According to our search, Woragus is owned by Mark Barry Taylor and Conrad Nyukuri. There have, however, been previous reports in the media about the presence of police officers at the expansive ranch and locals being harassed.
As for the Murumbi farm, the company that owns it on paper, but whose ownership records we could not find at the Registrar of Companies, is North Mogor Ltd. The land LR No Transmara/Intona/34 used to belong to former Vice President Joseph Murumbi, but it was taken over by the Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC) after he defaulted on a loan.
AFC sold it to North Mogor Holdings for Sh63.4 million in 2015, just two years after the Jubilee administration came into office. The valuation for the entire 2,090 acres showed it was worth between Sh124 million and Sh130 million.
Although the ownership records of North Mogor Holdings have since vanished, the company in papers previously filed in court about the controversial property said it bought the property and that it owns it.
“The 1st interested party executed a formal agreement of sale dated 19th October, 2015 with ADC and affirms that it honoured the full terms of the agreement of sale and that land parcel Transmara/Intona/34 was transferred and a title issued in the name of North Mogor Holdings Ltd on 17th November, 2015,” said the company.
