An anti-corruption court will on Friday rule on whether Digital strategist Dennis Itumbi will be allowed to prosecute Interior CS Fred Matiang’i over the Ruaraka land scandal.
Itumbi who on Tuesday appeared before Magistrate Douglas Ogoti said he has met the threshold required for instituting private proceedings.
Asked whether he has sufficient evidence to charge the CS, he said: “I will file them once the court orders for the prosecution of Matiang’i..part of the evidence required is witness statements.”
At the same time, Ogoti declined to hear submissions by the office of the DPP because Itumbi’s application was filed as ex-parte.
“I need to hear Itumbi first to know if his case has a legal threshold before he is allowed to serve his documents to the CS who he seeks to privately prosecute, ” he said.
Itumbi says he has decided to move to court due to the laxity by EACC and DPP to charge the CS, despite a High Court decision that confirmed the land was public and was illegally acquired.
Itumbi has moved wants Matiang’i charged with four corruption counts relating to the scandal.
The charges include abuse of office, willfully failure to comply with the law relating to the management of public funds, committing an offence of financial misconduct and conspiracy to defraud.
The High Court in June last year ruled that the Ruaraka land where two schools sit is public.
Justice Benard Eboso, Elijah Obaga and Kossy ber said the NLC misled the Ministry of Education in compensating businessman Francis Mburu which led to the loss of public funds.
The Education CS at the time when the money was paid was Fred Matiang’i, who has since moved to the Interior Ministry.
NLC, whose chairman at the time was Muhammad Swazuri, had claimed it searched through the ministry’s records and found that it belonged to Mburu.
But the bench said a search is not conclusive evidence of ownership and one must go further.
The National Land Commission filed the reference seeking to have the court help it in deciding whether the two schools – Ruaraka High School and Drive Inn Primary School- sit on is public land or private land.
A report by former Auditor General Edward Ouko last year said he could not confirm whether the Sh1.5 billion that had been wired to Mburu for the Ruaraka compensation was procedural.
Further, Ouko questions how Mburu was paid public funds yet the 13.7-acre parcel had been used as collateral that enabled him to take two separate loans amounting to Sh185 million.
In stark revelations, Ouko said the Sh3.3 billion could have been inflated to cater for what NLC said was a 15 per cent disturbance allowance.
A disturbance allowance is paid when the State acquires land on parcels with existing structures and requires owners to move out.