Kenya Gazette: The vital platform that con men use to steal your land

How often do you read the Kenya Gazette? Well, this small booklet which is published every Friday afternoon by the Government Printer, and which contains all government notices, is also the legal instrument which land fraudsters sometimes use to give legal cover to their crimes.

Many Kenyans have never seen, let alone read the Gazette, and it is this that scheming fraudsters exploit to defraud owners of their property.

“The current style involves people who know the history of a parcel of land very well; either they sold it or someone close to them did,” said Mr Ibrahim Mwathane, a consultant at the Land Development and Governance Institute.

There are many ways in which the process of committing land fraud starts but the whole process culminates in the publication of the loss of a title in the Kenya Gazette.

Before this, the fraudsters, often in connivance with officials at the ministry of Lands, manufacture new documents for the parcel they intend to steal.

The original documents, basically a copy of the title deed which is kept by the Registrar of Lands, are then substituted with the false documents.

The fraudsters then report to the police about the alleged loss of a title of the land they intend to steal, and are issued with a police abstract.

They then swear an affidavit affirming that they are the legal owners of the land. They then register a deed of indemnity for the purpose of reconstructing the lost title deed file.

At the Lands ministry, the registrar handling the case has to ascertain that indeed the land belongs to the person claiming it. 

This is done in many ways. The alleged owner may be asked to present himself in person to answer basic questions such as when the land was bought, the location of the land, the land size, et cetera.

Meanwhile, they use the affidavit of the lost title to request the director of survey to issue a certified copy of the Deed plan to replace the lost one.

FAKE CERTIFICATES
After ascertaining that he is the “true” owner of the land, the registrar then publishes a 60-day notice in the Kenya Gazette for the loss of title.

This period is crucial because it is during this time that anyone with interest on the land can come out and lodge their case before the land officials. This includes challenging the validity of the ownership.

With no objection, at the lapse of the 60-day notice, the Ministry of Lands issues a copy of the title using the Deed plan issued by the Survey of Kenya.

With the provisional title and a Deed plan, a person who sold the property earlier can get a new title and proceed to sell to yet another unsuspecting person.

“It should, however, be noted that this can only happen where records are poorly kept and/or there is complicity by insiders at Survey of Kenya and the Land Registry,” said Mr Mwathane.

“One also gets the impression that there is such a cartel pushing such irregularities.”

When the potential buyer goes to the Ministry to conduct a search on the particular parcel, what he or she often finds are the fake titles which he assumes to be genuine.

What follows is eviction from your land by another unsuspecting buyer and then, of course, the inevitable long drawn, costly court case.

Therefore, you could probably be sitting pretty in your house, unaware that your land has been sold to someone else.

The truth often comes out after the unsuspecting buyer starts developing the land and he or she is confronted by the real owner waving genuine documents.

However, in such cases, the true owners of the land can still be ascertained through supporting documents such as documentation of payment of land rates and the history of land which is usually held by the ministry of Lands.

HIGH PROFILE SAGA
One of the most high-profile cases involves the attempted grabbing in 2014 of a 130-acre prime land in Karen said to belong to businessman Horatio Da Gama Rose.

The land, valued at more than Sh8 billion, is the subject of an ongoing court case featuring two sets of documents purporting to proof ownership.

Former National Social Security Fund Managing Trustee Jos Konzolo, through his company Telesource.com Limited, claims to have bought the land in 2005 from a Mr Mugo Kamau.

However, Mr Da Gama Rose has told the court that Telesource.com’s documents were forgeries since he bought the land from Barclays Bank in 1983.

The land was sub-divided by well-connected politicians and senior government officials despite a court order barring any transactions on it. 

The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission recommended the prosecution of former Lands Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu for her role in the saga.

In October 2013, four traders were charged with forging a title deed for a 16-acre piece of land worth Sh1.6 billion on Mombasa Road belonging to Tulip Properties.

The four, Simon Kiprono Laboso, Mohammed Koriow Nur, Macdonald Lijoodi Maraka and Noor Mohammed Hassan, said they were allocated the land by a former Commissioner of Lands in 1988.

The land was sold by former President Daniel arap Moi to Tulip Properties in 1996, though Mr Jaswan Singh Rai, a director of the company, could not prove that he paid Mr Moi for the land under cross-examination.