Lead image for EACC recovers Sh55m property from ex-magistrate.
The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission yesterday recovered a Sh 55 million government house in upmarket Kizingo, Mombasa.
The Environment and Land Court in Mombasa nullified the 99 lease after finding that the house had been fraudulently and irregularly allocated to a former senior resident magistrate Gilbert Mwangi Njuguna more than two decades ago.
Justice Lucas Naikuni on July also ordered the retired magistrate, a former Commissioner of Lands and three others to pay EACC Sh10 million in general damages for trespass on the public land.
Njuguna, who joined the Judicial Service Commission in 1986, was interdicted in 2006 over misconduct allegations and retired in the public interest in 2008.
The property, measuring approximately 0.1024 acres and housing a high-grade government residence designated HG 53, had been part of a larger parcel, Mombasa Municipality/Block XXVI/243, which the Government had set aside decades earlier for civil servants' housing.
Investigations by EACC established that the property was unlawfully and irregularly allocated to Njuguna through a 99-year lease commencing on January 1, 1998.
According to the judgment, correspondence produced in court shows that senior officials in the Ministry of Public Works and Housing, and even the Cabinet, had explicitly declined to approve the boarding of the house for allocation to Njuguna.