Tycoon seeks protection in tussle over prime property
Interior CS Kithure Kindiki.
A businessman has written to Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki seeking protection in a running tussle with Equity Bank CEO James Mwangi over a multimillion-shilling property in Muthaiga.
Mount Pleasant Director Anverali Amershi Karmali, who claims ownership of the property, says he has been evicted despite the existence of a court order directing both parties in the case to maintain the status quo.
Documents filed before the land court show that both Mr Karmali and Mr Mwangi are laying claim to the three-acre property with an estimated current value of Sh555 million.
In a letter to Prof Kindiki dated November 2, 2022, Mr Karmali narrates how police officers were deployed to evict guards manning the property. He claims the officers were allegedly acting on instructions from Mr Mwangi.
"Illegal eviction"
The trader questions why police officers were deployed to carry out an illegal eviction in the presence of a court order issued on October 19.
“We seek the intervention of your good office in this matter and request that your office directs investigations and prosecution of all parties in the state employment responsible for the illegal and forceful eviction of our personnel and trespass onto our property,” states the letter.
He says that on October 29, 2022, at about 11 am, four armed Administration Police officers from the Rapid Deployment Unit (RDU) visited the property with instructions to evict him.
The officers, he says, left the property upon being questioned about their mission but returned in a lorry carrying 15 armed officers on November 1. They allegedly proceeded to evict guards from the property.
“When the head of the RDU, Mr Lawrence Owino, was called, he informed us that he was under instructions from James Mwangi to protect his property from possible trespassers,” states the letter addressed to the CS.
Mr Karmali wants the CS to instruct the Inspector General of Police to order the removal of the RDU from the property with immediate effect and ensure that he and his people have protection.
In July, Mr Mwangi secured a court order blocking his possible investigation or arrest over the disputed property. Mr Mwangi and Ms Jane Wangui Mundia, also a respondent in the case, are reported to have bought the land for Sh320 million in 2013.
In the suit, Mr Karmali moved to court in 2020 seeking eviction of Mr Mwangi from the land, and terming him a trespasser.
The businessman, through his company, Mount Pleasant Ltd, claims to have purchased the land from Moi-era Finance minister Arthur Magugu’s estate in July 2016.
Altered records
The trader alleges that the records at the land registry were altered, making it difficult to trace successive owners of the contested parcel.
Court papers say the Magugu family secured a Sh10.5 million loan from the National Bank of Kenya (NBK) in 1987 for a company named MDC Holdings Ltd using the Muthaiga property. They bought the land in 1982.
Mr Karmali claims that MDC defaulted on the loan, after which NBK sued it, seeking to recover the debt and interest that had accrued for 10 years. The trader says Mr Magugu had started to subdivide the property into two — LR No 214/20/2/1 and LR No 214/20/2/2 — but the plan was not completed.
He says his firm wrote to the Commissioner of Surveys in 2008, seeking to cancel the subdivision.
In 2013, Mount Pleasant guards were arrested after one John Birech filed a complaint that the company had encroached on LR No 214/20/2/1 and LR No 214/20/2/2.
Mr Birech was subsequently charged with forgery, but the court acquitted him on July 5, 2019, after finding that the prosecution had failed to prove its case against him.
Mr Mwangi in his court papers says he bought the land for Sh320 million from former President Daniel arap Moi in 2013, and that he conducted due diligence to ascertain the ownership before paying for the property.
The payments to Mr Moi were done in three instalments, and the ownership transfer to him was validly done through the Ministry of Lands. The case is still proceeding concurrently with the suit Mr Mwangi filed to block his arrest.
