Lost in Paradise? Brothers lock horns over Kiambu Road estate
A section of Runda Paradise, a Sh1.7 billion gated community housing project located at Paradise Lost, off Kiambu Road. Paradise Lost is at the centre of a property dispute pitting three brothers of the late tycoon Moses Mbugua Mwangi against each other. PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
- The company owns Misahara Coffee Estate and Kasarini Coffee Farm, both in Kiambu County, as well as Suguror Ranch in Laikipia County.
- Mr Mwangi said, in court affidavits, that though Paradise Lost generates Sh50 million annually, the money is never deposited in the known company account at CFC Stanbic bank.
In 1986, Moses Mbugua Mwangi called his three sons and their mother and placed most of his wealth under a company the four would run henceforth.
Mr Mbugua established Ndunde Investments Company and placed, as directors, his wife Christine Mithiri and their sons Daniel Mwangi, Isaac Gichia and Joseph Mbai Mbugua. He then transferred most of his property to the company.
The company owns Misahara Coffee Estate and Kasarini Coffee Farm, both in Kiambu County, as well as Suguror Ranch in Laikipia County. Other properties are in Kangemi, Runda, Ruiru and Karen. It is at Kasarini Coffee Farm that Paradise Lost resort is situated.
COURT BATTLE
The company is now the subject of a vicious court battle that pits Mr Daniel Mbugua against his two brothers, Mr Isaac Gichia Mbugua and Mr Joseph Mbai Mbugua.
Their mother died in 2014. The patriarch, Mr Mbugua, died in 1998 after a successful life which made him one of the few self-made billionaires of his time.
Mbugua was the son of Fundi Mwangi Mbugua, a freedom fighter. At the height of the Mau Mau independence struggle, Mzee Fundi whisked away his two sons, Mbugua and one Mbai, to Uganda.
They returned home at the end of the struggle and Mbugua soon after married Christine Mithiri.
She was the granddaughter of a Maasai patriarch called Ngara, who owned the land where Nairobi's Ngara neighbourhood stands. From an early age, Mr Mbugua embraced entrepreneurship, opening his first business, a petrol station in Ngara.
PRIME PROPERTY
He had five children: Daniel Mwangi, Gladys Wangari Mbugua, Isaac Gichia Mbugua, Joseph Mbai Mbugua and Catherine Mbugua.
How he acquired prime property on Kiambu Road estimated to be over 300 acres and a ranch of over 58,000 acres in Laikipia is not clear. What is known is that by the time he died, Mr Mbugua owned property across the country.
More than 11 years after his death, the three brothers are embroiled in a court battle over ownership of prime property on Kiambu Road estimated to be worth billions of shillings. The eldest son, Daniel Mwangi, accuses his brothers of locking him out in the management of the company.
He alleges that in 2012, his brothers conspired and sold 20 acres of the Kasarini estate for Sh300 million, yet they did not give him a cent from the transaction.
Mr Mwangi said, in court affidavits, that though Paradise Lost generates Sh50 million annually, the money is never deposited in the known company account at CFC Stanbic bank.
He also accuses his brothers of opening and operating other accounts improperly, thereby defrauding him. Paradise Gardens, situated at Misahara Coffee Estate, also does not benefit Mr Mwangi, with all revenues going to his brothers and their families, he says.
He accuses Mr Gichia of running the operations of Suguror Ranch, which includes rearing and selling livestock, without offering him any benefit.
He further states that the company has failed to pay taxes to the Kenya Revenue Authority and wants the court to order a proper account of all assets and liabilities owned by the firm from 2008.
DIVIDENDS
He also wants an order directing his brothers to pay him dividends accrued from 2008. But in the replying affidavit, Mr Gichia accuses his elder brother of having never taken interest in running the company. He says the company has never held a bank account and only opened one when it decided to sell the 20 acres of land in 2012.
“The use of funds was decided by our mother and none of us has the authority over the same. I reiterate that we are equal shareholders of the company and neither of the shareholders have a superior right over the other,” he said.
Mr Gichia further adds that their brother received dividends of Sh1 million in the company’s 2015/16 financial year and drives two vehicles bought by the company. He asks the court to dismiss the case.
But even as the Mbugua family battles it out in court, a group of people of meagre means are embroiled in an ownership dispute over a 900-acre piece of land. The Mbugua land is part of this tussle, which is before the National Land Commission (NLC).
BARTER TRADE
The claimants, under the banner Kasarini Ancestral Families Self-help Group, filed a claim with the NLC tribunal wanting to be given the land, which is already subdivided and partly sold.
Their forefathers, they claim, bought the property from the Dorobo community — Kimokori, Kimandani, Gitaki and Ndimothi — in 1930 through barter trade. According to them, 2,000 goats and cattle were given out in exchange for the land. However, the transaction was not in writing owing to the parties’ illiteracy.
The land is currently owned by a few families who are mentioned in the case before NLC as represented by Mr Samuel Mbugua, Ms Margaret Nyokabi, Mr Samuel Githegi, Ms Grace Muthoni, Mr Moses Mbugua, Ms Christine Mithiri, Mr Kimemia Gakunju, Ms Mary Waruri, Mr Kabogo Kangethe and Ms Ruth Njeri.
Projects on the property include Runda Paradise, Kencom Sacco Homes, Woodsman Villa, Prime Presidential Runda and Paradise Lost picnic site, Runda Palm Gardens, St Mary’s School, Evergreen Centre, New Breed City Chapel and PCEA Kasarini Church. The matter is yet to be decided by the commission.
MONDAY: The tug of war between the family of late Stephen Kung’u Kagiri, the proprietor of Hotel Kunste in Nakuru, and his second wife over the tycoon’s Sh50 billion empire.
