A Nairobi court on Monday withdrew a Ksh520 million case involving the owners of a popular Nairobi restaurant after an application by the Directorate of Public Prosecution (DPP).
In the application, the DPP argued that it would be better to resolve the criminal complaint in civil proceedings than in criminal proceedings.
Following the application, Milimani Principal Magistrate Wandia Nyamu approved that the case be withdrawn.
According to court documents, the case involved the hoteliers who were accused of attempting to defraud a local bank of the said amount. The suspects are husband and wife who run several restaurants in the country.
The hoteliers were charged by the DPP for obtaining execution of a security by false pretence contrary to section 314 of the Penal Code. They appeared in court on various occasions to face the charges.
Per the documents, the two were accused of working in cohorts with other individuals to steal from the bank before the recent development to drop the case.
In 2021, the owners were freed on a Ksh450,000 cash bail. According to the judge at the time, the matter was a civil issue since it arose from a commercial transaction.
At the time, the judge also advised the accused and the complainant to solve the matter out of court. However, the case progressed to the current ruling.
Throughout the court proceedings, the couple denied all the allegations against them. At one point a warrant of arrest was issued on one of the accused after she failed to honour several court summons.
This case is among other high-profile cases that the Office of the DPP has withdrawn in the past year. Recently DPP Renson Ingonga dropped a case involving crypto company Wordlcoin.
According to Ingonga, some of these high-profile cases were withdrawn because of illegally obtained evidence that could not stand in court among other reasons.
The evidence could not sustain the cases and had the cases proceeded, those charged were likely to win and sue the government for compensation, so the cases were withdrawn to save the taxpayers' money," he stated during his vetting before MPs in September last year.
