•EACC filed a suit to recover the cash which it alleges was corruptly acquired from Nairobi City County coffers.
•The Commission filed a suit seeking to recover the said monies from Kidero and his co-accused persons.
A suit in which EACC is seeking to recover Sh58 million from former Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero will be heard today.
The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission filed a suit to recover the cash which it alleges was corruptly acquired from Nairobi City County coffers when Kidero served as governor between 2013 and 2017.
Kidero was in April 2019, jointly with others, charged with conspiracy to commit an offence of corruption in which EACC argued that they conspired to defraud the Nairobi City County of Sh58 million.
At the same time, the Commission filed a suit seeking to recover the said monies from Kidero and his co-accused persons.
The former governor then rushed to the court of appeal to strike out the civil suit by EACC on grounds that it was an abuse of the court process.
He argued that the said suit arose from the lower courts and that if the civil suit is allowed to proceed concurrently with others, there was a real likelihood of the three courts entering different decisions over the same subject matter.
That appeal was unanimously dismissed by a three-judge bench comprising of Justices Hannah Okwengu, Fred Ochieng and John Mativo.
“In a nutshell, we find and hold that the applicant has failed to surmount the arguability test. Having so found, we find no reason to address the nugatory aspect. However, it will suffice to mention that we find nothing to suggest that if the civil suit is determined, the petition or the criminal trial will be rendered nugatory,” the judges said.
That judgment allowed EACC to provide the suit which is this morning coming up for hearing before Justice Esther Maina of the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes division of the High Court in Nairobi.
Justice Maina will also today deliver a judgment in a case where the Assets Recovery Agency sought to recover Sh330 million from Jacob Musau, Amos Mutuku Musyoka, Sylvester Mbuli Mbuvi and Patrick Karanja Njau.
The court had issued orders preserving the cash that is held in safe deposit boxes at G4S Limited in Mombasa.
The four were charged and convicted for stealing the money that disappeared in transit from Mombasa to Nairobi 10 years ago.