Lands, Housing and Urban Development Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu. She said it is up to the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission and the CID to get to the bottom of the matter. FILE PHOTO | SALATON NJAU | NATION
The government is investigating the possibility that directors of companies that benefitted from 500,000 acres of irregularly acquired land in Lamu County could be proxies acting for prominent people.
The real owners of the land, it is suspected, may have used their househelps or ordinary citizens to acquire thousands of acres in the county.
The Sunday Nation has established that records of the named directors are already being perused in different government departments to determine their financial status.
Lands Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu told this newspaper it is up to the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission and the CID to get to the bottom of the matter and come up with the real owners of the land. She further said President Uhuru Kenyatta acted within the confines of the Constitution in revoking the titles.
“The matter is now under investigation; some people might be mentioned as directors, yet they are not the real owners. These are some of the issues that should be addressed; the mentioned directors might be innocent househelps who do not know that they own thousands of acres of land,” Mrs Ngilu said.
Saturday, EACC chairman Mumo Matemu said the commission has begun investigations to determine the identity of the real owners and explore the possibility of prosecuting those mentioned.
“We have commenced investigations; we shall look at every angle, ranging from ownership and the circumstances under which the land was acquired,” he said.
Directors of the named companies will be investigated and their financial and bank statements probed to determine their status to establish whether the directors had the capacity to pay the huge amounts of money required for such transactions.
For instance, the Sunday Nation has established there are no records at the NSSF for one of the directors named who is suspected of being a househelp at one of the real owner’s homes.
“To have such a big chunk of land, it means you paid millions. Someone with that kind of money must be a known entity. Names of some of these directors have not been heard before,” a source at the Lands ministry said.
RUSKEN INTERNATIONAL
In one letter of allotment seen by theSunday Nation, Rusken International Limited, which was given 40,014 acres of land for a period of 45 years from March 2012, paid a stand premium of Sh9.6 million and an annual rent of Sh240,165.
A source at the Ministry of Lands hinted that in the case of Kaab Investments, which is said to have taken a loan of Sh1.065 billion and used the revoked land as collateral, the bank might have looked at other aspects besides land.
“You do not just get a loan of Sh1 billion with land as collateral; the bank must look at other aspects. You must show your worth,” said the source.
As of yesterday, Mrs Ngilu said, no director of the mentioned companies had come to the Ministry of Lands to protest the revocation of the titles.
Former Lands Minister James Orengo has been linked with the allocations which took place during his tenure. Mr Orengo Saturday rejected the assertions.
The County Council of Lamu had also raised the red flag, saying that allocation of huge pieces of land to companies that never carried out any development was not beneficial to Lamu people.
“It is proposed that the allocation done to Mat International be revised since, to date, they have not commenced development,” a letter sent to Mr Orengo in February 2012 reads in part.
No comments:
Post a Comment