The Lands ministry is expected to gazette new and more stringent guidelines for anyone searching its land registry records following fears that scores of people are holding fake title deeds for land and property. The new rules and guidelines will be released amidst fears that some landowners especially in Athi River, Kitengela and Mlolongo areas may be holding fake title deeds.
Lands Commissioner Zablon Mabea yesterday said scores of people in these areas and other parts of the country had fallen victim to unscrupulous brokers who use genuine title deeds to produce fake ones which they then issue to unsuspecting buyers. “We are aware that there are people out there generating fake documents,” said Mabea. Officials in the Lands ministry as well as players in the real estate and property sector said many people had been conned into buying land allocated for public use or earmarked for industrial development.
The officials said the buyers had after purchase invested in residential estates and commercial buildings financed by mortgages from banks and other financial institutions. Survey maps of the Athi River, Mlolongo and Kitengela areas show that huge chunks of land initially earmarked for export processing zones, a public university and police stations among other public utilities such as the Kenya Meat Commission and the Athi River Cemetery have been illegally possessed by individuals who have since subdivided them and sold them as plots. Some key politicians and wealthy businessmen have also fallen victim to the scammers.
Mabea said investigations by the ministry had revealed that the racketeers involved two groups of wealthy land brokers who worked with top-notch lawyers to produce the fake documents. He explained the brokers visit the lands office where they conduct searches for the titles of the land they were targeting under the guise that they were interested in buying the same.
Working with some of the Ministry staff, the brokers get copies of the land titles which they then forge to show they are the owners. They then present themselves as the genuine owners, subdivide and sell the plots to unsuspecting people. If an interested buyer conducts a search before purchase, it will indicate that the broker is the genuine owner. The fraudsters have even gone to the extent of replacing names of directors of various land holding companies and using fake names to sell land belonging to others.
The commissioner said he is working with the Criminal Investigation Department to arrest the fraudsters. He said so far, six cases have been filed in court while another 13 cases were reported to the ministry in the last week. Residents of Athi River, Mlolongo and Kitengela who have lived there for decades say the situation has been worsened by the provincial administration and powerful individuals in government who have turned a blind eye on the grabbers. Plans by aggrieved residents to hold a demo to protest against the continued grabbing of public land were last week stopped by the police. The residents have now threatened to block the highway if the government does not take action against the land grabbers.
The residents objected to the task force established last month to identify all the grabbed land and to look into historical land allocations and address the issue of squatters in the area. The task force includes former provincial commissioner John Abduba and Ministry of Lands PS Dorothy Angote as the chairperson. Other members are permanent secretaries in the ministries of Internal Security, Nairobi Metropolitan, Industrialisation and Labour. Also included are Mavoko Municipal Council town clerk, Lower Eastern regional commissioner and Bishop Nicholas Muli, Ms Shamit Singh and Ms Juda Muoka.
Majority of the local leaders as well as residents who all spoke on condition of anonymity as they feared repercussions from those involved in the grabbing claimed some of the individuals appointed to the task force had vested interests in the area and were therefore likely to influence the outcome of the task force. “The new constitution says there will be a National Land Commission which will say who are the real owners of the land,” said former Kibwezi MP Kalembe Ndile who is the chairperson of an association of people living in the area.
Most of the land in the area was surrendered back to the government by colonialists. Other huge tracts of land were acquired by the government after the owners died. Numerous court documents in our possession show protracted court battles that may indicate that hundreds of Kenyans from all over the country who may have bought land in the area may in future find themselves in ownership rows.
Yesterday, Mabea asked anyone with any evidence of illegal land deals to forward their complaints to the ministry for action. He said the only way that an interested land buyer could ascertain that a particular plot had a genuine title was by conducting a search at the lands office. “If a land has two or more titles, then it needs to be investigated,” said Mabea.
Comments