Patrick Kang’ethe Njuguna will go down in the annals of history as the old, blind and half paralysed man who ‘raided’ three banks and made way with Ksh 466million.
On April 8, 2010, Njuguna, alongisde his sons Edward Njuguna and George James Kireru Kangethe went to one Nairobi bank and borrowed about Sh166 million.
He presented a title of his 0.2 hectares piece of land in Dagoretti Riruta area as collateral.
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He visited two other banks in the next four years submitting ‘original’ titles for the same piece of land and secured Sh100 million and Sh200 million.
Both banks still retain the titles claiming that appropriate searches did not reveal any previous charge on the titles.
Njuguna, the proprietor of Princes Hotels in Nairobi, never repaid the three loans.
And on May 20, 2016 one of savings banks directed Leaky Auctioneers to advertise the parcel of land for sale to recover Sh195 million.
Njuguna and his two sons tried to block the sale by seeking an injunction in Mombasa (as per HCC No. 50 of 2014), but they were unsuccessful.
It was when the sale was re-advertised that the other two banks realised they had been duped and rushed to court.
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They both asserted that the property auction was illegal, null and void, since they never gave their consent for creation of any charge on the property.
They, however, lost the case and the foremost bank defended their case and was given the go-ahead to sell the land, since it was the first bank to hold the title to the land.
On appeal of the matter, a three-judge bench of P N Waki, M Warsame and PO Kiage, on June 28, 2018, stopped the sale of the land.
"The syndicate, we are told, has also hit other banks in the country, and it is perplexing that none of the perpetrators has been subjected to the criminal process. Perhaps it is a measure of how high the country has soared in the corruption index,” the judgment read.
If only Njuguna could see the dismay he caused.
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