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Kidero accuses EACC of retaining wife’s property against court order

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Former Nairobi governor Evans Kidero. FILE PHOTO | NMG

Former Nairobi governor Evans Kidero has accused the anti-corruption commission of failure to release all the documents and property it seized from his house despite a court order.

Mr Kidero said the agency called him to collect some of his documents but it has continued to detain property belonging his wife Susan Akello Mboya. High Court judge Hedwig Ong’udi on Tuesday last week directed the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) to release Mr Kidero’s seized property that is unrelated to the graft investigations.

Through lawyer Tom Ojienda, the former Nairobi County boss says the EACC has not notified his wife of the release of her documents and property.

“The order made on November 6 must be read and interpreted as obliging EACC to release all documents and property which are not a subject matter of, or relevant to, the matter before the court,” Mr Ojienda says in a letter addressed to EACC dated November 13.

Mr Kidero has requested EACC to allow his wife and a representative of Mr Ojienda’s law firm to collect the documents.

The documents include logbooks, financial statements of real estate firm Gem Suites, Susan’s PIN certificate, water and electricity bills, lease agreements for various property including Muthaiga Heights, and her bank statements. Earlier, the commission said it was investigating property worth Sh9 billion linked to Mr Kidero and spread across the country, mostly in land and buildings. However, Mr Kidero has accused the commission of over-valuing his assets and falsely listing him as the owner of some prime property in a harassment campaign. Mr Kidero claims that 15 of the 75 assets that the EACC has linked him to are owned by other individuals, including his spouse and late wife.

While he admits to owning 60 of the assets, the former governor argues that the property is worth Sh563.9 million and not Sh9 billion as the agency claims.

“The documents released to Mr Kidero on November 9 are with all due respect an insignificant portion of what is irrelevant to your investigations,” Mr Ojienda says.