With the hope to improve their lives and retire in peace in a place they call home, Ekeza members had deposited their money to the sacco, hoping to get loans to enable them buy houses.
However, “Dr” David Kariuki Ngare, popularly known as Gakuyo, is alleged to have siphoned the money at a value estimated at more than Sh1 billion saved by over 78,000 people at the troubled Ekeza Sacco and used it to spruce up his lifestyle.
Gakuyo is currently battling allegations of mismanaging over Sh2.5 billion members’ savings at Ekeza Sacco and swindling clients through fake property investments using his real estate company.
Mr Gakuyo is said to have used the money to upgrade his lifestyle by buying prime properties for his family and boosting his struggling real estate firm.
Until the intervention of the co-operatives regulator, the bishop and his senior managers had been accused of playing a cat-and-mouse game with clients who have been demanding their money back, and who want Director of Criminal Investigations George Kinoti to intervene.
However,Dr Matiang’i, who spoke during the Police Sacco’s AGM in Nairobi on Tuesday, said: “It is true, there is nothing to hide … we are hot on the trail of officials of Ekeza and the others. We will have no mercy … we have agreed with the inspector-general (of police) to go after these people and make them face the law.”
At the DCI offices, Mr Gakuyo, who was accompanied by a team of six lawyers led by Mr Dunstan Omari, spent slightly over an hour and did not speak to the media.
Gakuyo, spent the better part of Thursday at the economic crimes department of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI).
The investigations have marked the bursting of a bubble created by Kiambu televangelist-turned-politician David Kariuki Ngare, popularly know as Gakuyo, the general overseer of Calvary Chosen Centre, Thika.
Mr Ngare, through a notice in local dailies of January 24 put up for sale Lillies Hotel in Juja, Salama House and Swift Breeze Hardware on Garissa Road, Thika, a quarry in Murang’a and 250 acres of land in Murang’a and Machakos counties.
The sale is intended to ward off more than 53,000 members seeking a total refund of Sh2 billion.