It is a huge a relief for Nairobi lawyer Guy Spencer Elms after a Magistrate court allowed Director of Public Prosecution to withdraw criminal case against him relating to a Sh500 million piece of land in Karen.
City Court Chief Magistrate Joseline Ongayo allowed the prosecution’s application to withdraw the case in which Nairobi businesswoman Agnes Kagure was the complainant for lack of evidence.
Magistrate Ongayo in her ruling noted that the action of DPP was influenced by the information in his office following a perusal of the file presented before making the application.
“Even as the DPP noted they had acquired new conflicting evidence to what had been provided in court, the court could not dictate this evidence be presented before the withdrawal can be done as he was acting within his authority according to the Constitution,” she ruled.
Kagure’s lawyer Wandugi Kirathe, had opposed the DPP’s move to withdraw the case saying Kagure was the victim in the case and withdrawing it would be prejudicial to her.
According to Wandugi, DPP does not have an open book to commence and disrupt cases arbitrarily and more so in the said case where the office had not provided proper reasons for the withdrawal application.
Guy Spencer charges included forging his client’s Will the late Roger Bryan Robson who died in August 2012 and the power of attorney given to him by Roger in 2010.
The lawyer was charged after Agnes Kagure went to court claiming to have bought Roger’s property in Karen in November 2011.
Kagure said she paid Sh100 million in cash to Roger and that through her lawyer Michael Osundwa Sakwa, executed a formal conveyance with the deceased which was registered at the Ministry of Lands.
Before his death in August 2012, Robson engaged Elms in 1997 to execute his Will which stipulated that his estate should be awarded to his English nephew in form of money and to charitable organizations in Kenya involved with environment, wildlife and education.
The principal assets of Robson’s estate were a property on Ushirika Road, Karen, and a plot with flats next to Nairobi Hospital in Upper Hill both valued at over Sh500 million.
But the instructions were met by a series of barriers after Kagure accused Elms of forging Robson’s Will in the case that has been going on since 2016.
Forensic investigations by National Land Commission (NLC) however contradicted Kagure’s claims.
The NLC report found that the signatures on the 1997 Will were genuine and that forged signatures were actually on the transfer documents that Kagure claimed Robson signed in 2011, just before his death.
Since Robson’s death, the Karen property has been occupied multiple times by invaders including Martin Odinga Waluchio and Friedrich Pietz who claimed in August 2013, that they had bought the land for Sh30 million from Robson in 1994.
Gospel singer Alex Apoko, famously known as Ringtone, also invaded the property on June 6, 2014. Others, Messrs Maina, Meshack Obae and Sammy Lotasa claimed that they had been squatters in the said land since 1995 and wanted ownership of it having occupied the piece of land continuously for 12 years after Robson left for the UK in 1994 never to come back. To their surprise, there were no squatters in Mr Robson’s land and he had in fact never left the country.
DPP resolved to pursue withdrawal of the case due to lack of evidence. Former regime at the directorate had wanted Elms to be charged with fraud over the two properties.