Former Sports CS Rashid Echesa was rearrested on Monday as police seized five vehicles from his home on Karen estate, Nairobi.
He was taken to the DCI headquarters along Kiambu Road for further questioning over ownership of the vehicles, including a Toyota Land Cruiser V8, Passat, Mercedes Benz E-Class, and Ford.
Echesa termed his rearrest and the entire operation a political witch-hunt. But according to police sources, the arrest was effected following a revived 2016 case in which he had been accused of fraudulently obtaining and transferring ownership of the vehicles, which allegedly belonged to one of his deceased friends.
The deceased’s wife had filed the case at the Kiambu Magistrate’s Court. Echesa was picked from his house by officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations headquarters, after a five-hour search at his 12-bedroom mansion on the posh estate. The detectives searched the house in a bid to recover ownership documents. They included sale agreements, sale receipts and logbooks.
Earlier, the former CS had denied the detectives from the Special Crimes Unit access to the house, prompting them to jump over the perimeter wall at around 9 am. Though the sleuths entered the compound, Echesa denied them access to his house until his lawyer, Brian Khaemba, arrived.
On February 26, the detectives obtained a search warrant from the Kiambu chief magistrate’s court under a miscellaneous criminal application number 94 0f 2020.
“…that this honourable court be pleased to issue a warrant to search the premises, homes, motor vehicles and offices of the respondent to enable the investigating team to ascertain the allegations and recover evidence as the case may be…,” the court document read.
There are claims Echesa transferred the vehicles’ ownership after the complainant’s husband died in 2016. The widow claimed that the suspect used to hire the vehicles from her husband who was his close friend and business partner.
Lawyer Khaemba protested his client’s arrest, condemning the manner in which the raid and search were conducted. He said it was not in order for the detectives to raid the entire house and seize all the five vehicles while only one, Toyota Land Cruiser V8, had been contested.
“There is a complaint at the DCI that Echesa had obtained registration of a certain mort vehicle falsely. That there is a lady who had lodged complaint with the DCI, so they went to court and obtained a search warrant. They have combed through all the documents and recovered sale agreements and logbooks,” Khaemba said.
The lawyer said the case had been cleared by the DCI after a parliamentary committee referred the matter to them when the complainant raised the matter with Parliament when Echesa was nominated for the CS.
He said Echesa legitimately acquired the vehicle in question and money was paid in the presence of his lawyer.
