In one of the most uncanny tactics in journalism, William Ruto has been pressured to admitting that Weston Hotel was built on land acquired illegally.
While being interviewed by Stephen Sackur on BBC HARDtalk, the Deputy President admitted that he had innocently acquired the hotel after purchasing it from the original owner, who he said had acquired it illegally prior to his knowledge.
Nonetheless, Mr.Ruto has said that he is doing all in his power to ensure that any illegalities tied to Weston Hotel are rectified.
In the interview, Mr Sackur quizzed Ruto on Weston Hotel and asked him how is it that the hotel is sitting on the illegally acquired land.
In response, Ruto stated that the Weston Hotel affair had been severely blown out of proportion. In fact, one would think that Weston Hotel is half of Nairobi, yet it only sits on 0.7 hectares of land.
Deploying witty interview tactics, Sackur then cut the deputy shot, chiming into Ruto’s statement that the land is still illegally acquired because it is part of the Civil Aviation Authority’s land.
So how is it that Ruto was able to ‘miraculously’ purchase it and then build the Weston Hotel?
By which the deputy president responded that he had in fact, purchased the hotel, and not the land.
It is from this point that the deputy unknowingly let the cat out of the bag that the land was illegally acquired by the initial property owners of the land.
Interestingly in the interview, the deputy president also touched on the claims that Kenyans perceive Ruto to be the most corrupt leader in Kenya.
That is where the interviewer and the deputy president had a seemingly heated debate regarding his net worth, with the DP outrightly asking Mr Sackur, “Why don’t you do your homework?”