A Mombasa court stopped the sale of land worth Sh150 million allegedly grabbed from the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) pending the hearing and determination of a recovery case filed by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC).
The commission has sued former Commissioner of Lands Wilson Gachanja, Francis Waiganjo Kimanga, and Lucy Wanjiru Kimanga as well as their company Kensko Agro Produce Ltd. Also on the EACC’s radar is Silver Clouds Investment Limited, a private company operating in Mombasa.
This came after a probe undertaken by the anti-corruption watchdog following a complaint from KBC filed on September 29, 2022, alleging the illegal allocation of land reserved for the extension of the State broadcaster to a private developer.
The investigation revealed that Gachanja, then a Lands Commissioner, illegally allocated the said public land to a private developer.
“The land in question was first allocated to a private company called Silver Clouds Investment Limited vide a letter of allotment dated May 9, 1994,” said an official.
“Subsequently, the property was transferred to another private company called Kensko Agro Produce Ltd, which took over the property without undertaking due diligence.
Kensko Agro Produce Ltd proceeded to process title documents by executing a lease for the land on May 27, 1994, which was registered on May 30, 1994, and a certificate of lease issued in its name.”
Kensko Agro-Produce Limited is then said to have sub-divided the land into 5 parcels on July 28, 1994.
It then reportedly sold three of the parcels, which are currently under commercial use, and retained the other two which it is using for the same purposes.
EACC, in the suit, now wants the court to declare that all the transactions relating to the allocation and sub-division of the land were “fraudulent, illegal, null and void and incapable of passing any lawful right, title and/or interest over the suit properties to Kensko Agro Produce Ltd or any other person.”
The Mombasa Environment and Land Court Justice Nelly Matheka certified the case as urgent and set it for hearing on June 13, 2023.
