Demolitions uncover colourful life of reclusive billionaire Mike Maina

When he stormed the 20-acre piece of land in Nairobi’s Kayole with bulldozers, city billionaire Mike Maina brought attention to himself.

That was after he failed to force Nairobi Water Company to remove all piping and sewer lines from the property through a court order (ELC suit 1127 of 2016).

By using unorthodox means, Mr Maina had hoped that without water and sewer system the properties developed on the Kayole land would be rendered useless.

MARBLE ARCH HOTEL

Although little-known, Mr Maina was a Moi-era baron and his signature project is Marble Arch Hotel, a stone’s throwaway from Nairobi Fire Station — and which, according to parliamentary record, “grabbed” a public toilet to build a parking bay next to the parking lot once owned by the Kenya Taxi Cabs Association.

He was also a key player in the attempted grabbing of Karura Forest, where he was to build a mall similar to Sarit Centre on behalf of President Daniel arap Moi and power broker Hosea Kiplagat.

By then, Mr Maina was the proprietor of Pelican Engineering Construction Company and — as he would later say in court pleadings — he, and Nairobi lawyer Chege Kirundi, incorporated a company known as Kitusuru Limited to obtain allocation of the Karura Forest whereby approximately 45.5. acres was demarcated for his use.

The tycoon had instructed Mr Kirundi to act as his advocate and co-director by incorporating the new company.

Mr Maina was to hold the directorship on behalf of Mr Kiplagat, while Mr Kirundi was to hold the directorship in trust for Mr Maina.

KARURA FOREST LAND

It is not clear why he wanted President Moi served in the suit filed by the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) which had bought the contentious allocation for Sh295.5 million.

The prime land was between Old Muthaiga and the Kitusuru Estate in Nairobi.

Although this was forest land, Kitusuru Limited obtained a title from the Commissioner of Lands on April 1, 1995 and Mr Kirundi approached NSSF to purchase the land, which it did. After that, Kitusuru Limited was dissolved.

It was only after Mwai Kibaki won the presidential election that the Forest Department got the courage to write to the NSSF board of trustees in 2003.

FOREST RESERVE

The pensions fund was told it did not own the land (LR 2009/12274) as it had been excised from a gazetted Forest Reserve by a Proclamation No. 44 of 1932.

The court heard that this chunk was declared a central forest under Legal Notice 174 of 30th May 1964.

Thus, according to the Forest Act Cap. 385, only the Minister in charge of government forests was permitted to alter the boundary — which was not done.

It was after NSSF sued him together with Mr Kirundi that Mr Maina sought to bring in President Moi and Mr Kiplagat.

GRABBED TOILET

Back to the City, Parliament had been told that Mr Maina’s Marble Arch Hotel had grabbed a council toilet — an issue that was revisited this week when Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko threatened, albeit in an uncouth way, to reclaim the toilet land after Mr Maina destroyed several houses built on his land in Kayole.

But that was not the first time that Marble Arch establishment had been admonished.

Another instance was when he was accused of destroying the Lagos Road public toilet — previously used by upcountry travellers since it was adjacent to the main offices of the now defunct Akamba Public Road Services Limited — one of Kenya’s most enduring long-distance passenger and courier service providers.

MIGHT

That Mr Maina’s Marble Arch got away with it after grabbing one of the three public toilets that disappeared during the Kanu era was an indicator of his might then.

Even after the matter was raised in Parliament in August 2005, all what the government said was that the Ministry of Local Government “has issued firm instructions to the Nairobi City Council (NCC) to repossess the toilets as per the recommendations of the Ndung’u Commission about grabbed land.”

But the status quo has remained — until the Nairobi governor sent his bulldozers — which is more of a tit-for-tat over the Kayole saga.

Mr Maina is a litigious man.

KAYOLE LAND

For the last 10 years, he has been battling in courts to get back the Kayole land that he claims was occupied illegally.

How he got this land is not clear but what we know is that in 1988 he was conned out of Sh17.4 million at View Park Towers along Uhuru Highway in Nairobi by a Mr Gabriel Njoroge Mbuthia who purported to sell plot No LR 23917 in Kayole, which belonged to the City Council.

Mr Mbuthia had posed as the son of Cabinet Minister JJ Kamotho.

He had been introduced to the tycoon as Mr Gabriel Kamotho by a cousin, NG Macharia.

It was the prosecution’s case that Mr Mbuthia, who was found guilty and jailed for two-and-a-half years, lawyer Paul Chapai Oduso and two civil servants — Mr Peter Gateru Macharia and Mr Marclus Njiru Nguru — obtained the money pretending they could sell land in Kayole.

COUNCIL PLOT

Mr Maina told the court that he then discovered that Mr Mbuthia was not the owner of the plot as it belonged to the council.

By then, Mr Mbuthia had received the money and escaped to Uganda.

But the occupants of this piece of land, LR 23917, allege that it was given to them by President Moi through the Embakasi Kanu office during the days when MP David Mwenje was notorious for allocating both private and public land to his supporters “and with authority of (then) City Council.”

How Mr Maina’s Muthithi Investment got this land was played out in court when it heard HCC No. 457 of 1999.

It emerged that after the tycoon was conned out of Sh17 million, he later started a purchase process of the same land from a company known as Gamex Shelter Hunters Ltd.

SUIT

But before the deal could be concluded, the Nairobi City Council filed a suit at the High Court against the Commissioner of Lands, Muthithi Investments and Gamex Shelter Hunters Limited arguing that LR 23917 belonged to the public.

In 1999, when this was happening, Nairobi was then under Town Clerk Zipporah Wandera, Kuria wa Gathoni as director of planning, and a generally ceremonial mayor, Sammy Mbugua.

By then, Joseph Kamotho was the Minister for Local Government. The less said about them, the better.

ABOUT-TURN

What we know today is that after City Hall lodged a case against Mr Maina’s Muthithi Investment, it did an about-turn during the case and a consent order was registered between all the parties which agreed that Muthithi Investment was the owner of the property.

Why City Hall decided not to pursue its claim is not known but the consent order was issued by the High Court on February 8, 2000 — thus leaving the multi-billion-shilling property to the Murang’a-born tycoon.

This consent order was followed by a court order dated July 8, 2000 in which Muthithi Investment was declared the owner of the land.

But there was one problem: Local MP David Mwenje had already started allocating part of the land to some Kanu youth wingers, while others claimed that they were allocated the land by President Moi.

REMOVE OCCUPANTS

Mr Maina had tried to remove these occupants through the courts in Civil Case 498 of 2004, but they staged a counter argument that he had also received the land through fraud.

But when their lawyer termed the court order that gave Mr Maina the land as “suspect”, the phrase seemed to irk Justice Murugi Mugo who was hearing the case.

She said: “With respect I find Counsel’s comment about this court’s order rather unbecoming as it suggests fraudulent dealings on the part of the court. Counsel knows that the appropriate course to take where one is dissatisfied with an order of the court is to move the court to either set the judgment aside in a review application or on appeal,” Justice Mugo said.

“That the respondents may not have been parties in HCCC No. 457 of 1999 does not give them any right to adopt an abusive attitude towards the court in regard to its orders.”

REMOVED FROM JUDICIARY

Interestingly, Justice Mugo was removed from the judiciary after the 2013 vetting after she was accused of being rude and uncourteous to lawyers and litigants. The Judges and Magistrates Vetting Board chaired by Sharad Rao found her unsuitable to be a judge.

Back to Kayole, Justice Mugo had noted that the property was, as per court records, owned by Muthithi Investments and that all those who had “invaded” the land had no right to dismiss a court order vesting ownership as “phoney and/or irregularly obtained” when the same remains unchallenged.

But their argument that they were not party to the original suit which gave Mr Maina the land did not impress the court.

Justice Mugo said the defence was “a sham and incapable of cure by amendment or otherwise.”

ORDER

With that, Muthithi Investment got an order to have the occupants removed by force — which was done this week much to the chagrin of many, including the governor.

Before that, Mr Maina had tried to force the occupants out by suing the Nairobi Water and Sewerage Company and asking the court to order the firm to remove its pipelines from his property since the county government had not sought his consent.

Nairobi Water argued that it had entered legally binding contracts with other customers and that it would be a breach of the agreement and contrary to its legal mandate of issuing water and sewerage services.

Justice K. Bor argued that giving such an order would affect many other consumers who were not enjoined in the suit.

With that, Mr Maina was left to pursue the eviction order.

COMPENSATION

A year ago, this reclusive man was in the news again after he was awarded Sh711 million to compensate him after his mansion was demolished in Nairobi’s upmarket Spring Valley neighbourhood to pave way for a link road between Waiyaki Way and Red Hill Road.

Although the land had been acquired through compulsory acquisition in 1976, government officials said they did not know how Mr Maina was issued with a title deed.

While the government had urged the court to declare that the property was acquired for road purpose and that Mr Maina’s title was irregular, he argued that he had a valid title issued by the Commissioner of Lands.

Mr Maina successfully defended the acquisition of the land, saying the government should have followed due process to get it back.

The court agreed.

Mr Maina is a veteran of land deals — but how he will handle his current war of words with Governor Sonko remains to be seen.

Already, the county government has marked his hotel as “illegal property”.

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The writer is the Editor, Investigations and Special Projects