Time appears to be running out for retired judge Philip Ransley who has swindled many Kenyans out of properties worth millions of dollars.
He fled to England via Dubai in June 2016 after he had been charged with stealing Sh102.7 million from Angela Scott and Sh152.7 million from Rowland Minns. On 21 January 2017 the High Court in Milimani issued an arrest warrant against him.
The Director of Public Prosecutions is now preparing to seek his extradition through the Attorney General. A letter requesting Ransley’s extradition will soon be sent to the UK authorities via the diplomatic bag of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Ransley, 85 years old, embezzled money from the client accounts at his law firm, Ransley McVicker Shaw Advocates, that he started in 2007 after he retired from the Kenyan bench.
Ransley and his wife Virginia Wambui Shaw, both partners in RMSA,
are due to appear before the Kenya Law Society on March 19 to answer charges of professional misconduct concerning the theft of Sh152.7 million from Minns.
"I didn't lose the money. I didn't handle his file ( Minns). It was nothing to do with me," Virginia told the Star yesterday.
"They should sue the company (RMSA) to get his money back, not Philip and me personally," she said.
Ironically Ransley chaired the National Task Force on Police Reforms that issued its report in 2009. Ransley has dual Kenyan and British nationality.
Ransley has married five times, or had long term relationships, and had children with his second wife Priscilla and his fourth wife Rhoda Wambui.
However Ransley also had many other women and it appears that he may have had a psychological compulsion to have multiple relationships.
Another colleague said that Ransley had built 17 houses in Kenya and that many of them were given to his wives and girlfriends. One recipient was the receptionist at a media house in Nairobi.
Ransley’s last known address is 110 Church Road, Richmond, London where his daughter Candice and her husband Marc Schneider, a former investor in Wananchi Communications, have a home. They purchased the three-storey house for £3.5 million ( Sh490 million) in 2010.
Despite embezzling millions, Ransley is believed to be personally short of money. He has now moved out of his daughter’s house and is living in a small flat. His main recreation is playing cards at the Richmond Bridge Club.
The club was warned last year that Ransley had a history of swindling his bridge partners, such as Rowland Minns who played cards with him for 40 years, but the club replied that he had not misbehaved so far and they could not discriminate against members.
Ransley appears to have used money from the client account of his law firm to try and rescue his shaky finances following multiple costly love affairs.
Instead he lost hundreds of millions buying copper from a Congolese conman. In 2015 he also paid Sh165 million to two men to acquire Euro banknotes that could be washed clean with a special chemical.
Ransley then filed an official complaint with the CID that they had hacked into his account at Imperial Bank and stolen Sh100 million but he would accept Sh40 million if it was returned to him. The conmen allegedly admitted to CID that they owed Ransley Sh100 million but the case has never come to court.
There are multiple instances of Ransley swindling clients, some in court and some not yet in court.
Former estate agent Roland Minns sold his plot of land in Langata through Ransley’s law firm for Sh260 million in 2014. Ransley delayed remitting the funds to Minns but he eventually managed to get Sh105 million. Minns is taking legal action to recover the outstanding Sh155 million.
Retired justice Jonathan Havelock, the lawyer for Minns, complained about the fraud to the Law Society of Kenya which has summoned Ransley and partner Virginia Shaw to answer charges of professional misconduct on March 19. Virginia has protested that Havelock should not be allowed to handle the complaint before LSK because he personally knows Ransley.
In 2014 Ransley also acted as lawyer for Jonathan Scott, presenter of the Big Cat Dairies on television, who sold two acres of his plot in Langata to fund medical treatment for his wife. The buyer paid Sh50 million into Ransley’s client account at Imperial Bank in December 2014 and a further Sh50 million in March 2015.
By April 2015, that Imperial Bank account had almost Sh350 million but then Sh150 million was transferred to another account in Chase Bank and Sh168 million was given to the conmen to ‘wash’ banknotes.
In May 2016, Ransley finally confessed to Scott on the phone that he had taken the money.
“I asked him ‘Is the money still in Imperial Bank?’ and he said ‘No, I took it, I withdrew it. I feel ashamed. I didn’t need the money but I felt sorry for a lady. I don’t know what came over me’,” Scott says Ransley told him on the phone. “A few days later he told me he was willing to resign from the Bar.
But the next day he started the bullshit again about scamming and hacking of the client account.”
Ransley’s client account at Imperial Bank was effectively empty well before the bank collapsed in October 2016.
Ransley sold his house on Ololua Ridge in Karen for Sh50 million in 2015 to try and reduce his obligations. The money was paid into the Imperial Bank client account but Sh40 million was immediately onlent to Orion Hotels where Ransley was a shareholder.
Charlie Simpson sold his Film Studios property in Jamhuri Park to Supersport in 2010 through RMSA but did not receive $300,000 (Sh30 million) of the sale price. Simpson blamed Ransley as the signatory of the RMSA escrow account and said his partner Virginia was not involved.
In August 2014 Homa Bay MP and lawyer Peter Kaluma posted on Facebook that he was acting for an elderly widow who owned 35 acres in Karen. She had been locked up in Langata Women’s Prison in 2011 for 16 months for allegedly trying to steal her own land. Kaluma accused Ransley of helping fraudsters to grab several acres and building his own personal house on some of the land. The DPP then accused Kaluma of trying to steal the land at which point Kaluma said he would petition to have Tobiko removed from office.
Ransley was also the executor of the estate of an old Kenyan family. Recently the family discovered that Ransley had transferred the title of two plots in Kitengela to himself after the father died. Virginia Shaw has promised to transfer them back to the family.
In the 1980s, a house in Karen was left to a well known medical NGO. Ransley handled the matter but then succeeded in acquiring the house himself.
Ransley was also the executor of a deceased Kenyan Asian client at the coast but transferred one of the family properties into his own name. An Indian lawyer is presently trying to recover the money.
Even in the 1960s Ransley had issues. A former District Officer in Kiambu had to warn Ransley, then a young Nairobi lawyer, not to get involved in the Government Land Consolidation exercise when plots were being allocated. He was allegedly offering to help small farmers to secure the best possible deal when he was not needed.
These are the cases that the Star has managed to identify but there are thought to be many others.