Investigative agencies have conducted a major swoop and arrested more than 14 suspected of being implicated in land fraud incidents.
A multi-agency team coordinated by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) last weekend took into custody the suspects who include two land registrars and a clerk from Ardhi House’s records department.
Some 19 vehicles belonging to the suspects have been seized as part of the investigations that also included a raid and search in their homes. The suspects will be arraigned Monday morning.
The probe commenced last year in December following a request from Lands and Physical Planning Principal Secretary Nixon Korir in a letter to DCI Mohamed Amin to help in unearthing the cartel behind fake title deeds.
The exercise is also being extended to the Government Printer and the Business Registration Services (BRS) where documents on ownership are manipulated to aid the fraudulent registration of land ownership.
“This is an ongoing exercise between the Ministry and a multi-agency team led by DCI. More arrests will be made as the probe progresses,” PS Korir confirmed, adding that a key suspect who operates a printing press where some of the fake documents are printed is among those held.
The PS said the recovered items include fake stamps, a seal, letters of allotment, and certificates of leases, while the clerk apprehended is suspected of plucking genuine documents from land files and replacing them with the fake ones.
In September last year, the Ministry of Lands reports that 367 security papers for printing title deeds, not completed title deeds, were stolen from the Government Printer, linking the theft to corrupt cartels who likely intend to produce fraudulent title deeds.
The suspects are facing multiple charges that include conspiracy to defraud, forgery of official documents, forgery of other offenses in relation to stamps, making false documents, obtaining registration by false pretense, and uttering a forgery.
Last Thursday, the DCI’s Land Fraud Investigations Unit obtained warrants from Milimani courts to search the suspects’ homes located in Nairobi and several outskirts of the city as well as access their phone data and bank records.
“Once the fraudulent documents are prepared, some of the suspects use their accomplices, such as the one in the Land’s registry, to remove the legitimate documents and replace them with the forged or fraudulently made documents to form part of the contents of the correspondence and parcel files held by the State Department for Lands and Physical Planning,” DCI states in court documents.
Some of the forged documents include letters of allotments, deed plans, certificates of titles, certificates of leases, transfer of land documents, stamps, seals, and indentures, among others.
They are alleged to be working in cahoots with other unidentified persons in forging officials' stamps and signatures, more so for the retired and or deceased former staff of the State Department of Lands and Physical Planning, which, by design, are backdated to pass as if they are genuine records.
“The counterfeited land sheets and records are then later ingested into the digital and manual registrations as genuine records with intent and thus defrauding genuine public or government institutions and private land owners of their properties and or innocent buyers of the monies thereof," DCI said.
DCI states that the said forged or fraudulently made documents are then allegedly used in civil litigations by advocates to pursue legal redress in Court to occasion further defrauding, disinheriting, and/or acquisition of parcels of land from the legitimate owners through vigorous legal processes which majority of the genuine.
