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Shock as city firm loses Sh400m land in scam

January 12th, 2015 2 min read

A property development company has lost an acre of prime land in Westlands in a scandal the National Land Commission had been alerted about.

A director of Pink Pearl Investments Limited, Sadhu Singh Devgun, wrote to NLC Chairman Muhamad Swazuri on October 8 last year after a man informed him that the title of the property whose value is estimated to be Sh400 million, belonged to a State House worker only known as Wambugu.

It was a shocker for Mr Devgun and his company when they went to pay the annual rates last week.

He said they established that the property had been transferred to an individual called Ali Noor Hillow Huka.

“I’m not aware about the matter unless I see a copy of the letter sent to me by those complaining,” Mr Swazuri said.

FILE GONE MISSING

Earlier, through its lawyers, Rachier and Amolo Advocates, the company had attempted to do search at the Lands Office to establish the status of the property only to be told that the file containing documents for the parcel had gone missing.

They even put a notice in the Daily Nation of October 8, 2014 to caution anybody from buying the undeveloped property.

“Take notice that the property is registered in the name of Pink Pearl Investment Ltd and the company has no intention of selling it,” the notice read in part.

Since NLC failed to respond to its letter,  the company prepared an indemnity, made under oath to prove that the land belonged to it.

“We applied for an official search on October 8, 2014 and have not got it to date. They keep telling us that the file is missing,” reads part of the indemnity the company directors swore before the Commissioner for Oaths on October 30, 2014.

“We are also informed that the Registrar of Titles is willing to open a temporary file to facilitate the issuance of the search, provided we give an indemnity to the Government of Kenya.”

OUTSTANDING ARREARS

It is after giving the indemnity that the directors of the company went to pay the annual rates on November 11, 2014 and confirmed that the property was still registered in their company’s name.

They, however, did not clear all the outstanding arrears.

When they went to clear the remaining Sh288,660 on Tuesday last week, they found out that ownership had changed.

“We intend to go to court to reclaim ownership of our property,” Mr Devgun said.