COURT FREEZES FERDINAND WAITITU’S ASSETS

The High Court has frozen 18 prime properties and 7 motor vehicles belonging to former Kiambu Governor Ferdinand Waititu pending the hearing and determination of a case filed by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC).

The orders issued by Anti-Corruption Court judge Esther Maina restrained Waititu, his wife Susan Ndung’u and their companies from selling, transferring, or in any other way interfering with the properties and vehicles until the case is concluded.

“An order of injunction is hereby issued restraining the defendants and interested parties, their agents, servants, and or any other persons from selling, transferring, charging, disposing, wasting or in any other way alienating the following properties pending the hearing and determination of this application,” the court documents seen by Citizen Digital read in part.

The 18 landed properties are spread across Runda, Embakasi, Thindigua, Kayole, Kabete, Kitengela and Nairobi while the vehicles include; two Toyota Land Cruisers, Toyota D/Cabin, Toyota Probox, Toyota Vitz, Toyota Ractis and a Caterpillar.

Waititu is accused of fraudulently acquiring the assets worth Ksh.1.94 billion between 2015 and 2020 in his capacity as governor and former legislator.

The former Governor, who was impeached as Kiambu Governor in January 2020, is accused of allegedly misappropriating public funds by issuing fraudulent procurement tenders to firms outsourced to offer services to the County Government of Kiambu.

EACC claims that once the payments for the fallacious contracts were made by Kiambu County, the contracted firms would forward the proceeds to a number of bank accounts and businesses registered under Waititu’s name and that of his wife, Susan Wangari.

“The contractors, upon payment transferred proceeds of the fictitious procurement contracts to Waititu, his wife (Susan Wangari) and their companies – Saika Two Estates Developers Limited, Bienvenue Delta Hotel and Bins Management Services Limited as kick-backs,” EACC said in an earlier statement.

In the controversial period, Waititu allegedly made bank transactions worth Ksh.928,873,317 on his personal accounts while his wife handled Ksh.282,871,658.

Saika Two Developers Limited, Bienvenu Delta Hotel and Bins Management Services Limited respectively transacted Ksh. 906,329,068, Ksh. 56,924,332 and Ksh. 62,711,000. All transactions totalled to Ksh. 1,937,709,376

In order to avoid prying eyes, EACC claims that Waititu conveniently invested the money in the aforementioned high-end properties. The asking prices for the said properties ranged from between Ksh. 10 million and Ksh. 380 million.

By Citizen