Court orders document exchange in Ksh.100B Paradise Lost estate case

Presiding Judge Yuvinaris Angima issued the directive after opposing advocates failed to reach a consensus on whether the four distinct files relate to identical boundary beacons and title deeds.

The court ruled that swapping pleadings will enable the advocates to establish whether the cases should be consolidated, heard concurrently, or prosecuted as separate matters.

The four overlapping disputes include an action by Margaret Nyokabi against Saniel Mukiri and eight others; a 17-year-old suit lodged by the Mbari ya Mbogo clan against the executors of the estate of Mary Warurii Gikunju; a petition by Esther Njeri Gikunju challenging the National Land Commission and 11 others; and a high-stakes fraud claim brought by Ndunde Investments Limited, the family-owned vehicle behind Paradise Lost, against multiple private firms and government land bodies.

Central to the protracted conflict is the Mbari ya Mbogo family's long-running bid to reclaim a 933-acre estate near Thindigua.

Their lawyer, Harrison Kinyanjui, submitted that the clan originally secured the ancestral property around 1900 when their forebear, Mbogo Wainaina, purchased it from the Ndorobo community for 2,000 goats.

According to the family, British settlers took over the land in the 1950s for coffee farming and subsequently entrusted management to five men led by Samuel Githegi, then an official with the coffee plantation union, before the settlers departed.

However, rival factions, including the Kasarini Farmers Co-operative Society, the Kasarini Ancestral Families Group, and the executors of Mary Gikunju's estate, argue that the matter is settled law. In their court responses, the respondents urged the bench to dismiss the Mbari ya Mbogo petition in limine with punitive costs.

One respondent, Daniel Mukiri, maintained the action is time-barred and amounts to an abuse of court process, arguing it seeks to revive claims extinguished years ago under an abated 2009 case, as well as a subsequent claim thrown out by the National Land Commission.

Running parallel to the ancestral claim is an explosive commercial dispute mounted by Ndunde Investments, an enterprise founded in 1986 by the late tycoon Mbugua Mwangi and now held by his six children following his death and that of his wife, Christine Mithiri.

Ndunde's advocates, Kevin Mogeni and Duncan Okatch, argue that their client sought state approval between 2013 and 2016 to amalgamate multiple agricultural titles and convert the property into residential plots.

While that conversion stalled before fresh deeds were finalized, the company alleges that rogue actors forged a parallel title, L.R. Number 13316, using a fabricated presidential grant before circulating it through a web of shell entities and private individuals.

Ndunde argues that the contested deed was transferred through Gianni Limited and Daniel Gichinga before ending up with Pamat Enterprises, whose directors then moved to carve the property into 281 sub-plots with the alleged collusion of Kiambu County planners and land registrars. The family claims records at the Business Registration Service were manipulated to conceal corporate ownership changes during the transactions

In a sworn affidavit, company director Isaac Gichia stated that hired intruders recently invaded the land to erect unauthorized boundary markers.

Ndunde is now petitioning the court for an immediate injunction restraining Pamat Enterprises, its affiliates, and county officials from dealing, sub-dividing, or stepping foot onto the Sh100 billion estate pending the outcome of the suit.