Talk:Josiah Mwangi Kariuki

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The article below can only be found in google cache here [ http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:Gx2zKDdfKCkJ:www.eastandard.net/reports/rep11040403.htm+%22Josiah+Mwangi+Kariuki%22&hl=en] I pasted it here for availability since google cache is bound to expire. How bossom friends robbed JM family of its property By Murithi Mutiga Three weeks ago today, Josiah Mwangi Kariuki, popularly known as JM, the restless patriot whose populist politics earned him an assassin’s bullet in March 1975, would have turned 75.

The milestone of JM’s diamond anniversary, like that of his assassination two weeks before his birthday, was hardly observed publicly and went completely unacknowledged by the Government.

His family marked the occasions with sombre dignity in a series of commemorative events in the capital.

Investigations by the’Sunday Standard,’though, reveal that 29 years after JM was killed by government forces pricked by his constant criticism of their plundering ways, his family still reels under the unrelenting wounds inflicted by JM’s friends and foes, with the covert aid of officialdom in successive governments.

Although he was arguably one of the wealthiest Kenyans at the time of his death, his family can hardly lay claim to any of his vast estate today.

The family, we can reveal for the first time, has lived for years under the shadow of intelligence surveillance, culminating in forcible dispersal by the notorious Special Branch police officers in Nairobi in 1995 as they planned events to mark the 20th anniversary of JM’s assassination.

And despite the inauguration of a new government headed by the man nominally appointed family guardian in the wake of JM’s murder and which counts in its ranks erstwhile opposition advocates for the "Justice for JM" cause, the Kibaki administration has announced it has no intention of reopening the case.

"An assassin’s conflict with the dead does not end with their death," says Koigi wa Wamwere, who was sent to detention by President Kenyatta shortly after JM’s death and who has dedicated a whole chapter of his autobiographical work, I Refuse to Die, to JM.

"An assassin must carry on his conflict with the dead and take it to those who live on and are seen to keep the offensive ideas of the dead man alive."

In JM’s case it would appear the assassins killed the man, then went for his property, and later decided to haunt and hound his family for years on end.

Information gleaned from exclusive interviews with family members and independent investigations carried out by the Sunday Standard reveals that at the time of his death, JM Kariuki commanded an impressive investment portfolio that included some of the nation’s biggest blue-chip holdings.

He was a substantial shareholder in the showpiece International Casino entertainment complex where he regularly spent his evenings and was seen with former police chief Ben Gethi on the day he disappeared. He also held shares in the giant Industrial and Commercial Development Corporation (ICDC), Kedong Ranching in Naivasha, Motor Mart, CMC Motors, British American Tobacco (BAT), Pan African Investments Company Limited, Lonrho Motors East Africa and Kenya Breweries.

He also held interests in Standard Chartered Bank Limited, Unga Group as well as Car and General.

Documents also show that he held shares, jointly with then Vice-President Daniel arap Moi and Eric Bomett (Moi’s brother-in-law), in Rift Valley African Agencies, a property company.

Apart from a stable of racehorses, JM was also proprietor of a tour company, which he owned jointly with Israeli businessman Ernest Kahane and is also reputed to have owned a charter aircraft based at the Wilson Airport.

Information obtained from oral interviews with family members which could not, however, be corroborated independently, also indicated that JM owned a number of mines in Zambia and Mozambique where he was a regular visitor.

He also owned, in partnership with a number of friends, several properties in Nairobi’s Kirinyaga Road (formerly Grogan Road) and additionally held the title for at least five major land parcels around the country measuring thousands of hectares.

Following his brutal murder on March 2 1975, JM’s business empire crumbled like a deck of cards.

Apparently, JM had gone into the bulk of his business ventures with a close-knit group of friends dominated by those with whom he had spent time in detention during the State of the Emergency in the 1950s.

Conscious of his tense relationship with the Kiambu elite that monopolised access to the then President, JM also involved a number of State House insiders in his businesses in the hope that their presence would deter his numerous enemies from targeting his business empire in retaliation to his politics.

Immediately after his death, these friends and associates, including several former and serving members of government, conspired to rob his family of its stake in virtually all the companies in which JM had an interest.

"Like any other businessman," says JM’s half brother Benny Kanyi Waweru, "JM had taken loans. Some of his partners and associates took advantage and progressively divided the property between themselves. Because the family was in the dark on the precise position of his estate, we would just see advertisements putting up the properties for auction in the papers and that would be that."

The family points the finger of blame for their being in the dark on the precise position of JM’s estate at senior counsel Lee Muthoga, who was JM’s lawyer and bosom friend. Muthoga is now a judge at the International Criminal Tribunal in Rwanda (ICTR).

Says Doris Nyambura, Kariuki’s first wife: "Shortly after JM’s funeral, Muthoga called us together (JM’s three wives and one other relative) and asked me to get a certain blue file which JM had given me a long time ago.

"I extracted it from the safe where I had kept it," she recalls. "I thought he was going to read us the will. I did not suspect anything because Muthoga was like a member of the family whom JM had helped a lot by paying fees for and helping to start his law firm.

"Instead of reading it to us," says Doris,"Muthoga sat by the fireside and plucked page by page, reading each of them and then throwing all of them into the fire."

Muthoga’s explanation for his actions to the family at the time was that the documents he had torched were damaging income tax records, which would have been injurious to the family if discovered by government.

The family does not, however, buy the explanation and believes that he destroyed documents that contained vital information on JM’s estate.

An expose of the subject in the fiery anti-establishment Nairobi Law Monthly — run by lawyer-politician Gitobu Imanyara — as shown by documents in our possession, forced the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) to rescind an invitation to Muthoga to chair the society’s committee on professional conduct and ethics in 1994.

In time, most of JM’s estate fell into the hands of a cabal of well-connected government mandarins to the exclusion of the surviving family members in a series of quiet underhand deals. (A family source however pointed out that, to its credit, the Rift Valley African Agencies associated with former President Moi still pays out JM’s share dividends to the family).

The brazen plunder of the vast tracts of land owned by JM by the same forces that stripped him of his blue-chip possessions made no pretences at either subtlety or decorum.

At the time of his death, JM owned several large farms in Rift Valley and Central provinces, including the 1,600-hectare Kanyamwi Farm in Gilgil and the Riverside Farm in Ol Kalou, which measured 800 hectares.

He also owned the land on which Castle Inn stands on the outskirts of Nairobi and a residential property in Ngong. His family is additionally involved in a protracted legal battle with businessman Dominic Gatheca, a relation of former First Lady Mama Ngina Kenyatta, over the ownership of a 45-acre piece of prime land next to the Ruaraka Kenya Breweries plant.

In mid 1981, JM’s widows and children received a stunning order from the Ol Kalou DO requiring them to urgently travel to Nyandarua to witness the "handing-over" of Riverside Farm to a group calling itself the Nyakinyua Ndorua Kanini Kega Farmers Company, whose members claimed to have been promised settlement on the farm by JM.

Furious family members swiftly proceeded to Ol Kalou where they lodged their objections. The matter was referred to then Nyandarua DC, Mr Philemon Mwaisaka (now Principal of the Utalii College), whose attempts at arbitration failed.

The family subsequently won a string of court cases over the dispute, but all attempts at getting the provincial administration or police to enforce an order to evict the squatters came to naught.

In 1993, the dispute came to national attention when the squatters violently attempted to repulse the family from burying JM’s father at the farm, next to the place where his son was laid to rest.

The same scene was replicated at the Gilgil farm, which was put up for sale by the Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) over a loan JM owed the bank.

President Kibaki, then serving as Finance Minister, intervened and prevailed on the bank to give the family a grace period to organise how to offset the balance.

Attempts by the family to sell half of the 1,600-hectare piece of land were however bogged down by payment disputes with a number of parties who paid a deposit, occupied the land and subsequently refused to pay the balance. The land was put up for auction in 1996.

The family was similarly embroiled in ownership tussles over the Nairobi parcels of land. Remarkably, JM’s immediate family members are not too bothered by the intricacies of the business dealings three decades down the line.

On the contrary, it is the quest for justice and truth that festers like a wound that will not heal.

In an interview last week, Doris Nyambura, who is surprisingly sprightly and in good health despite her advanced years, and two of her children, Rosemary and Mark Kariuki, asked the Sunday Standard not to focus too much on the subject of JM’s earthly assets.

"It is the desire of the family that the truth on JM’s killers be revealed," said Doris.""Most of the things that JM fought for such as free education and a just Judiciary are being implemented by this government. But it is only fair that Kenyans be told who killed JM."

Despite the fact that there is a new administration in place, however, there was an additional reason why, 29 years down the line, Mrs Kariuki is reluctant to be drawn into the subject of those who robbed her husband’s estate.

"It is dangerous if these people read in the newspapers that I am saying they are squatting on our land. They might even kill me!" she said.

Some interesting links i came across in the course of research

You can find a picture of J.M. Kariuki amoung the pictures accessable from this link [1] The link below point to an article about political succession AND related conflicts in Kenya. Long, but very informative [2] For some reasons, google search for Kariuki pick this article, which to it a little bit too far by claiming Kenya problems are a result of UK media [3] This is the most fun one, its written by an American Richard Gollé Cushing, who claim to have written a 65,000 words novel inspired by the murder. The novel's title is 'Too Pure for the Hyenas', but apparently no publisher would touch it with a 10 foot poll as it was very critical of the Kenyatta regime. It read like some who had visited Kenya for real and it is hosted on University of California, berkeley so it may have some weight. The author is however unlikely to be on line as he is over 80 years old now. [4]

Margaret Thatcher remark

"This was somehow similar to what happened in UK when Margaret Thatcher engaged in her full scale Privatization" This statement may became a source of edit war in future, so i am going to back it up with this article. Quote "NEWLY ELECTED to a second term and possessed of a mandate to cut the "nanny state," Margaret Thatcher set out in 1984 to privatize Britain's state pension system. The result stands as a warning to the Bush administration. The Thatcher reforms empowered unscrupulous salesmen to press inappropriate savings accounts on unsophisticated workers; regulators ultimately required payment of some $24 billion in compensation to the victims. Last year 500,000 Britons who had opted out of the government pension system in favor of private accounts returned ruefully to nanny." From [5]

Wealth

If anybody know how this guy got rich, it would be cool to update the article thanks