LSK vows action against Githu Muigai, State Law officers over Anglo Leasing contracts

PHOTO/BILLY MUTAI. Law Society of Kenya chairman Eric Mutua. Law Society of Kenya chairman Eric Mutua says there is a possibility of Kenyans rebelling against the Court of Appeal because of its “poor score in handling election cases”.

The Law Society of Kenya has vowed a legal onslaught against Attorney General Githu Muigai and top officials of the State Law Office for what it described as their “unconstitutional, illegal and unprofessional” handling of the Anglo Leasing-type cases.

LSK chairman Eric Mutua said the association of lawyers is of the opinion that Prof Muigai, Solicitor-General Njee Muturi and Deputy Solicitor-General Muthoni Kimani were either negligent or conspired with the Executive to commit the legal blunders that resulted in Kenya having to pay Sh1.4 billion for suspicious contracts.

The LSK said it would ask Prof Muigai, Mr Muturi and Ms Kimani to show cause why a Certificate of Dishonour shouldn’t be issued to each of them.

The society is also headed to court to file a suit to declare the trio unsuitable to hold office and surcharge them for all the costs of the case.

Mr Mutua said they would also seek to remove the Attorney General from the Roll of Senior Counsel, one of the recognitions of experience and scholarly excellence in the legal profession reserved for the most senior of them.

In the meantime, said Mr Mutua, Prof Muigai should vacate his office by resigning.

“We believe very strongly that the President was either misdirected or misadvised by the Office of the Attorney General to order for payments in respect of these Anglo Leasing-type contracts or he was privy to certain information which the public was not privy to,” said Mr Mutua.

“A lie has been told, all the way from the Attorney General’s office and now the President has been looped in by being misled that we lost the cases. We did not lose the cases in England. We agreed to pay. We conspired to pay irregularly,” said Mutua.

KENYA CAN STILL APPEAL

He said contrary to the assertions by the Attorney General, Kenya can still appeal the judgement.

Mr Mutua said that in December 2013, as the date for the judgement neared, the State Law Office failed to respond to five letters from Kenya’s lawyers in London seeking instructions, which enabled the judge to strike out Kenya’s defence and make a judgement against the country.

He said the lawyers from the firm of Edwin Coe wrote to the AG saying that Kenya was handling the case “in a very casual manner, there is a lot of money involved, I don’t seem to be getting adequate instructions on the matter and I’m concerned why the AG is handling the manner in a very casual manner.”

Mr Muturi then appeared before the judge in London and was allowed to act on behalf of Kenya despite the fact that he did not have a certificate to practice in the United Kingdom and Wales, making his submissions invalid.

“We are hurt first as the Law Society because our professionals have let us down and secondly, that the country has been treated unfairly by what we consider a possibility of conspiracy. We have been hurt as a profession because of misconduct by our colleagues and secondly we believe there was a conspiracy that was hatched in Kenya and went to London and it may have involved judicial officers,” said Mr Mutua.

'INCOMPETENT OR COMPROMISED' JUDGE

The LSK said that from its analysis of the case from a trove of documents it had obtained, the British judge who handled the case between Universal Satspace and Kenya, Justice Teare was either “incompetent or compromised in the matter.”

This, they said, is because he allowed Mr Muturi to present Kenya’s defence and counterclaim without establishing first whether Kenya’s Solicitor General had a licence to practice in the Courts of England and Wales.
Mr Mutua claimed that the judge ruled against Kenya based on hearsay and based on oral evidence without the documents in which Kenya was said to have agreed to pay $7.6 million after mediation.

“The Judge appears to have been casual in dealing with the Kenyan case by ignoring the weighty matters of corruption and bribery which were pleaded in the defence and counter claim,” said Mr Mutua.