• Kitany sensationally claimed that on the day that Linturi was supposed to table a motion to impeach CS Anne Waiguru they were together at Sopa Lodge where they spent the night
• She says the only way to impeach Waiguru was for Linturi to appear in Parliament and introduce the motion. It failed because of his absence.
Image: FILE
Meru Senator Mithika Linturi and his now-estranged wife Marianne Kitany were making love at Sopa Lodge in Naivasha when Linturi was required in Parliament to impeach CS Anne Waiguru.
Kitany sensationally claimed on Tuesday in court that on the day Linturi was supposed to table his motion to impeach the Devolution CS, they were together at Sopa Lodge where they spent the night.
Linturi had wanted Waiguru impeached for alleged abuse of office and other alleged offences.
If his impeachment motion was to succeed, Linturi had to be in Parliament to introduce it. President Uhuru Kenyatta wanted the embarrassing motion to die and never come to a vote. Linturi was under intense pressure to give in.
And so he was a no-show and Waiguru remained in office.
The two former lovers are embroiled in a bitter divorce case and property feud.
Kitany said on Tuesday that Linturi brought the motion to impeach Waiguru. But as the chief of staff in the office of Deputy President William Ruto, she and others from the Presidency were tasked with making sure he dropped the motion.
For the motion to proceed, Linturi had to appear in Parliament on the day it was tabled.
“However, on the day that he was to table the motion, we were with him at Sopa Lodge,” Kitany told the court.
She said after she and Linturi returned from Naivasha, their love grew and she introduced him to her family including her brothers and sisters.
Linturi who stayed in a rented four-bedroom house on Ngong Road later moved into her house in Kileleshwa.
It was also around the same time that they introduced their children to each other since they both had children from previous relationships.
Kitany told the court Linturi’s three children each had different mothers but they all moved into her house.
The court also heard that she was a mother to Linturi’s children and brought them clothes and snacks.
She told the court that as a Kalenjin from the Nandi subtribe, they performed a traditional wedding according to Nandi traditions.
She also told the court she was a self-made millionaire who ran different businesses right from high school, long before she met Linturi.
Kitany said she met the senator in 2013 in the DP's office and they met frequently because he used to visit often.
She further claimed that the senator, an MP at the time, used to go to complain personally to the DP that his Meru people were not getting government jobs.
This led the DP to order her as chief of staff to be the one dealing with Linturi personally and they were regularly in contact.
On how she left the office of the DP, Kitany said that she was on a list of 175 civil servants asked to step aside so the state could investigate them.
But after the investigation was completed, they were never ordered back to their offices.
She told the court she is now a businesswoman managing several businesses, some of them co-owned with the senator.
Concerning her wealth, Kitany said that she took a Sh1.2 million loan immediately after high school when she was employed at KCB. She bought a house in Komarock.
She then sold the house for Sh600,000 when she was joining university and as a first-year student she bought shares in KQ and Mumias Sugar.
She also testified that she bought a car in her first year at Kenyatta University and she was using it in her food shop business within the university.
Kitany has worked in more than 10 institutions including Kenya Polytechnic, Deacons, SmithKline Becham, Strathmore University, Hamilton Harrison and Mathews Law firm and Kenya Railways.
Kitany, an IT specialist by profession, says she filed for divorce from her former husband in 2010 and it was finalised in 2016.
The court also heard that at one point she sold shares that brought her Sh50-Sh60 million, more money than she had ever seen.
The court heard that she filed for divorce from her first husband because he was cruel and often beat her because he was insecure about her wealth and status. He was still a banker and she was earning more than he.
Senator Linturi and Kitany are in the middle of an ugly divorce. Kitany maintains that she was married to Linturi and they invested in several businesses together, even building the disputed Runda home together.
However, Linturi claims that she was just a visitor at their house. His daughter has also sworn an affidavit confirming that Kitany was only a visitor.
The senator has said he has only one wife and produced a marriage certificate to show that he was legally married and he could not marry a second wife.
Kitany and Linturi each have called witnesses to support their cases and Linturi is expected to call a priest totestify and defend him.
(Edited by V. Graham)