Gachagua Gets Back His Sh202 Million Seized by the Government

Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua will get back the Sh202 million he was ordered to forfeit to the government last year.

This is after the Appeals Court set aside a High Court ruling that ordered Gachagua to forfeit the money after he failed to explain and prove how he obtained the funds from various government agencies and Bungoma County.

"Indeed he admitted he received from government agencies...there was nothing to show of the contract has had been awarded a tender by that ministry...," Justice Esther Maina ruled in July last year

The judge noted that there was no evidence that Gachagua executed the contract in order to obtain the funds. The court further rejected the argument that the Sh202 was in a fixed account.

The money held in three bank accounts at Rafiki Microfinance Bank was frozen in 2020 following an application filed by the Assets Recovery Agency (ARA), which argued that Gachagua could not explain the source of the funds. 

But in the Court of Appeal, ARA backed Gachagus’s appeal against the ruling, saying it has since established that the funds are not proceeds of crime as earlier alleged.

ARA further told the court that it never investigated claims by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) that Gachagua obtained the money fraudulently from various State institutions and the Bungoma County government. 

The institutions include the Kenya Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Eradication Council (Kenttec), the State Department of ASALs and Regional Development, Kenya Power, the State Department of Lands and Physical Planning, and the Bungoma government.

The court heard that when the DCI raised the claim, ARA moved and seized the wealth without conducting its own probe.

Justices Daniel Musinga, Imana Laibuta and Ngenye Macharia have adopted an agreement signed between ARA and Gachagua’s attorneys to settle the matter.

Consequently, the judges vacated orders of the High Court that had declared the funds to be proceeds of crime.