Death, betrayal and a missing Kenyan billionaire

Wherever he is, whatever he is doing, billionaire Samuel Kanogo Ritho knows the mess he left behind at the Kilifi land registry. If this story reads like a soap opera, it is because it has all the elements of a thriller: lost trust, debauchery, betrayal, murder, and mystery.

At the tail end, you will find that Ritho’s wife was poisoned, her body stolen from the mortuary and buried at dawn. At the moment, Ritho’s whereabouts still remain a mystery.

Last week, on the serene grounds of the Charles Disney Memorial Homes in Muthaiga, Nairobi, I met with Michael Aronson, perhaps one of the few Kenyans who understand the intricate details about the Kilifi-Jimba scandal that left Ritho a billionaire and thousands of would-be investors who yearned for beach plots and a spectacular panoramic view of Indian Ocean clutching worthless title deeds.

Mr Aronson, now in his 80s, is a respected figure on land matters in Kenya. He was the vice chair of the Ndung’u Land Commission and also of the 1999 Njonjo Commission of Inquiry into Land Law systems.

He tells me he first met Ritho in 1960 when he (Aronson) was appointed the Deputy Registrar of Native Lands and Ritho was a assistant land registrar based in Fort Hall, now Murang’a.

“He was very intelligent and hardworking,” he tells me of the billionaire, who fattened his accounts through illegal allocation of government land.

JUNIOR OFFICER

Ritho, who hails from Mathioya in Murang’a, had, during the colonial days, worked as a junior officer in Fort Hall during the land consolidation process, a political undertaking that saw the pooling together of small holdings and registration of a single parcel under individual tenure. Although this was part of the Swynnerton Plan of 1953, its implementation at a time when tens of thousands of central Kenya men were in detention due to the Mau Mau war, saw many freedom fighters become landless in independent Kenya and they were forced to scout for land elsewhere. The political mischief behind consolidation was to reward and create a loyalist middle-class among the Kikuyu, among those who were not “tainted” by Mau Mau. And that is how most colonial chiefs and headmen in central Kenya got hundreds of acres of land, some belonging to detained and jailed freedom fighters.

As a young man, Ritho worked diligently and earnestly, though at a junior level. He, perhaps, had some distant dreams of great achievement and grand wealth. In the Murang’a land registry, he had come to understand the value of land and how to play games within the system to turn the dreams into reality.

Ritho was transferred to the coast where the government wanted to replicate the central Kenya experiment and that is where the sad story of Kilifi-Jimba, which would transform Ritho from a soda-and-chips civil servant to a baron, starts.

SAME FORMULA

Just before independence, the colonial government decided to settle the Mijikenda in both Kwale and Kilifi replicating the same land formula used in Central Province. But unlike in the former Central Province, the colonial government realised the only suitable land worth settling at the coast was Crown Land. As a result the Land Consolidation Act could not be applied since the land was owned by the government. Legally, a title deed, under Land Consolidation Act, could only be registered if the land was falling under the Trust Land Act.

Ritho understood all these dynamics and more. In order to skirt these legal issues, the government decided to create two settlement schemes on the Crown land from which it would allocate title deeds to the locals. One of the scheme was in Kwale’s Shimba Hills and the other was in Kilifi at Gede.

“By then individual ownership of a plot of land was not part of the customary laws of the Mijikenda. In both settlements, the agriculture departments created plots of land with boundaries and maps marking roads of access and public utility plots,” Mr Aronson says.

In Gede, where Kilifi-Jimba falls, any local who wanted a plot could simply apply and pay no fee. “It was given without any charge,” recalls Mr Aronson.

NOT SUITABLE

When this settlement in Kilifi was being mooted, it was realised that 177 acres of beach plots were not suitable for farming. It was rocky, barren and devoid of any vegetation.

“That land had no value at that time,” Aronson tells me. “There was no water and no soil. It was all coral rocks and snakes.”

In law, this was unallocated government land bordering the Indian Ocean on one side and the settlement scheme on the other. Ritho was by this time working in Kilifi land registry and he hatched a plot to grab and sell the 177 acres.

He knew that there were some legal hurdles he had to jump. Let me break this down. For any government land to become individualised, or adjudicated for that matter, there has to be a gazette notice signed by a Cabinet Minister in charge. That is how both Gede and Shimba Hills were delineated and boundaries of each scheme set. The Land Survey Plan for Gede was numbered 179/62 and still exists at the Survey of Kenya offices in Nairobi as such.

From his office in Kilifi, Ritho starts salivating at these plots between the Indian Ocean and the Gede settlement and between Watamu township and residential areas of Malindi.

WAS FIRED

It is not clear at what point Ritho started plotting this scheme to grab the 177 acres but what we know is that he was fired from government service, went back to the university and became a lawyer. Armed with papers and a law firm, S.K. Ritho and Advocates, the man returned to Kilifi with determination.

“Everybody thought he was still a government official,” Waweru Njora, the only other city advocate well informed about the Kilifi-Jimba scandal, tells me.

But Ritho had become the ultimate land shark. He knew there was a growing middle-class out there dreaming of owning villas by the ocean, where opulence, discretion and taste was paramount. The only problem was that he could not have the land gazetted. Working with officials at the Kilifi land registry, Ritho managed to have the land divided into plots and titles were issued.

“He also managed to have a Registry Index Map (RIM) for the land,” says Mr Njora.

A RIM is one of the most important documents in any land transaction because it forms the basis of first registration, further subdivision of registered land and in solving boundary disputes. This was deposited at the Kilifi Registry. Any surveyor must use the RIM so that he does not encroach on other people’s land. (Mistake number one).

TRUST LAND

In essence, what Ritho did with the RIM was to steal government land by claiming it was trust land. More than that, he in one of the many court cases concerning this scam said that the Land Adjudication Act was applied. It was not.

“All these claims are entirely false and any basic investigation would easily show that fact,” says Aronson.

“Each title that is registered must be capable of being identified on the ground by reference to a map that shows the boundaries of the plot. That map is only created by the Registered Land Act and any map created for an area to which the Registered Land Act has not been applied is totally invalid and illegal.”

For years, Ardhi House did not know, or if they did they looked the other way, when Ritho continued with his scheme collecting hundreds of millions of shillings from buyers. He also made his own green cards and anyone who searched the Kilifi Registry always found the land was genuine and the titles were real.

“It is when you went to the Survey of Kenya that you found that the land is still unallocated. It is government land,” says Njora, who has maps of this land.

TITLE DEEDS

At one point, the government started allocating the land to investors and developers and that is when the clash between the Ritho buyers and those allotted by government started.

“The problem in Kilifi is that we have two parallel titles – one by Ritho and the other by government,” says Njora.

Ritho had invested in properties in Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kilifi. At the moment, it is estimated his fortune is worth Sh3 billion. He also gave his seven children the best education. John is a dentist in London, Margaret, a financial analyst in the US, Nyambura works in the US, Geoffrey is a neurosurgeon in Spain, Michael is a pharmacist in US while Florence is a university professor in Chicago. The eldest, Elizabeth is a Nairobi lawyer.

Saddled by court cases and troubles, Ritho suffered a stroke in 2009, and after he left hospital he “accepted Jesus as his personal saviour”, according to a source close to the family. He then fled to Europe with his wife Gladys Luhanga, a retired Kileleshwa Primary school teacher, leaving behind a trail of cases and frustrated beach plot owners.

It was in Europe where the children started fighting over the Ritho properties with their mother. Ritho, according to court papers was still sickly.

TOXICOLOGY REPORT

Then sometime in October 2013 Mrs Ritho returned to Kenya to renew her British visa and that is the time she was poisoned. A toxicology report by Dr Oduor Johansen, a government pathologist, indicated Mrs Ritho died as a result of poisoning and ruled out suicide.

She had been rushed to Mater Hospital on October 9, 2013 complaining of stomach pains, vomiting and diarrhoea. After five days, she was dead.

One of her daughters, Elizabeth Muthoni, stopped the burial until investigations were carried out into the cause of her mother’s death. But as the case and investigations progressed, one of Ritho’s sons, Geoffrey, the neurosurgeon, arrived at the morgue one morning armed with documents to collect the body. Muthoni, who was not informed of the developments, was left holding the original death certificate and burial permit. It is only when she went to check her mother’s body that she found it had been taken away by her brother and secretly buried in their rural home.

The burial in Murang’a took place slightly after 6am and the grave was quickly sealed with cement!

SUFFERED INJURIES

What we now know from a court case is that in Europe, Ritho had suffered injuries while in the care of his three children and the UK Court stopped them from withdrawing him from the Royal Free Hospital in London until a judge was convinced that he was fit to fly back to Kenya.

The three children – Dr John Kanogo Ritho, Geoffrey Avugwi Ritho, and Margaret Ritho – had sued the social services department of London Borough of Brent Cross which had started investigations to determine the cause of Ritho’s visible body injuries fearing he could have been assaulted. Sources say Ritho is still under the care of Social Services, after the High Court on December 12, 2011 stopped the children from withdrawing him from hospital. He had burns and a large wound on the knee.

The battle is tied to Ritho’s properties and a controversial will redrafted in London. In May 2013, Gladys had moved to court in Nairobi to stop her sons from controlling the family’s estate saying her husband could not make a will due to the stroke. She had also discovered that millions of shillings had been withdrawn from various bank accounts. It was a case that she was determined to win against her children. And she did.

On October 9, Mrs Ritho, according to police records, cooked chicken, vegetables and ugali for dinner and ate before she went to bed. She then started vomiting and was rushed to MP Shah Hospital and later Mater, where she died. Back in Kilifi, Mr Ritho’s victims are still crying for justice; while he is struggling with personal problems.