Former National Land Commission boss Prof. Muhammad Swazuri together with ten other suspects charged with alleged graft in a land compensation deal will know the fate of their bail application ruling on Tuesday next week. The accused will spend the Easter holiday in remand as a result.
Swazuri and other officials and business people were arrested on Wednesday morning by EACC officials and taken to Integrity House in connection with allegations of irregular payment of compensation by NLC to another party for land acquisition.
According to the Director of Public Prosecutions, the irregular payment was made to Tornado Carriers Limited for acquisition of land in Mombasa. The DPP had pointed out in a statement that The Kenya National Highways Authority had requested the NLC to acquire land for the construction of Mombasa Southern bypass and Kipevu New Highway Container Terminal Link Road in October 2013, and the initial valuation was Kshs 34,501,110 and an award was made to the said company which they rejected, prompting a second valuation.
“The team returned a staggering Kshs 109,769,363.00 for the same parcel of land in January 2017,” read the DPP’s statement. KeNHA remitted the same amount to NLC, and NLC ended up paying M/s Tornado Carriers Ltd. Kshs 55,269,363 and C.W. Chege and Co. Advocates Kshs 54,500,000. The DPP has affirmed there is sufficient evidence therein to warrant prosecution.
On Thursday, appearing at the Anti-Corruption Court before Chief Magistrate Lawrence Mugambi, Swazuri and the ten others who were present denied the land fraud charges preferred against them. The prosecution asked for the denial of bail for the accused, saying the graft charges they faced were serious and they were likely to interfere with witnesses. However, the defence said they should be given bail and that the prosecution hadn’t provided sufficient evidence showing they’ll interfere with witnesses or they’ll fail to appear in court. 13 suspects failed to appear in court and a warrant of arrest was issued for the 13 if they fail to appear at the EACC by Tuesday morning.