Man fights for ‘grabbed’ Sh1b inheritance, Kenyans can Eat you when you are alive!

 October 20th 2013By Isaiah Lucheli 

KENYA: Five years ago Mr Benson Ritho commissioned a survey firm to subdivide a piece of land valued at over Sh1 billion in Embakasi. He gave the firm instructions to undertake the subdivision of the 50-acre plot with the view of securing deed plans for the purpose of effecting transfer to the beneficiaries of the estate of the late Joseph Maingi Murithi (Ritho’s father). The subdivision, which is now a matter of court battle, generated a total of 590 plots in an exercise conducted by Geoner Systems Limited, a firm associated with the current Rangwe MP George Oner. However, after the subdivision got underway Ritho reportedly fell ill and was bed-ridden for three years.
According to hospital records, Ritho was taken ill in 2008 and following prolonged medical intervention, fully recovered in September 2011. When he recovered it emerged that the plots had been sold and flats erected on the land purportedly with his consent and knowledge. In documents filed in court Ritho avers that during the period of his illness the Rangwe MP had, in breach of trust and professional calling as quantity surveyor, disposed the plots to other parties not known to him. “Further and without prejudice to the above the plaintiff avers that the defendants in their fraudulent initiatives knowingly and fraudulently forged his signature on the said conveyancing purporting the signatures to be Ritho’s,” read the plaint. Kenyatta Odiwuor and Company Advocate, a firm purported to have drawn some of the illegal and fraudulent conveyances, has distanced itself from the transactions. Among beneficiaries of the allocations include the immediate former Embakasi MP Ferdinand Waititu. In December 2012, Ritho presented applications for the provision of title deeds but the registrar of titles and the chief land registrar declined on the grounds that Ritho was insane. “As far as I am concerned I have not been adjudged to be of unsound mind by any medical practitioner or court of law, thus I was very aggrieved by the said decision by the lands officials to refuse to register my application on the said grounds,” he said. Advertisement Early last year, Ritho moved to court seeking a permanent injunction against the MP or his servants from acting on their behalf or any other person from selling, transferring alienating or trespassing into the land in dispute.

On February 25, this year High Court Judge Pauline Nyamweya issued an order restraining the defendants and interested parties against interfering with the plaintiff’s possession and from trespassing on or carrying out any development or selling or transferring the land. The court also directed that the petitioner effects service of the orders to all the interested parties and general public by placing an advertisement in one of the daily newspapers.