A legal battle has emerged over a Nairobi house now valued at about KSh45 million, with a woman accusing her former lawyer of taking advantage of her mental illness to fraudulently transfer and sell the property without her knowledge or consent.
Monica Jackline Wambui has filed a case before the Environment and Land Court against advocate Chege Wainaina and property buyer Lucy Wairimu Mwangi.
She is seeking to recover House No. 6 at Casablanca Villas on Dennis Pritt Road, claiming the transfer of ownership was carried out through fraud.
According to court documents, Wambui says she hired Wainaina in 2005 to represent her during divorce proceedings. During that period, she entrusted him with important personal documents, including the original title deed for the property, her passports, bank records and other documents needed for legal work.
She now claims the lawyer later redeemed the property’s title from I&M Bank without her permission, obtained a power of attorney in his favour and arranged the sale of the house to Lucy Wairimu Mwangi.
Wambui further alleges that a forensic review of the 2009 sale agreement and other related documents found that signatures said to be hers were forged and did not match her genuine signatures.
She also claims that some conveyancing documents were taken to a psychiatric hospital where she had been admitted for treatment and were signed when she was not in a position to understand or consent to the transaction.
She maintains that although the defendants say more than KSh12 million was paid for the property, she never received any of the money from the sale.
However, Wainaina and Mwangi have strongly denied the allegations.
They argue that the property was legally sold in 2009 and that the ownership dispute has already been settled through earlier cases before the High Court and the Court of Appeal.
The buyer also argues that Wambui has continued occupying the property and has collected rental income from it for the past 17 years despite previous court decisions that upheld the transfer of ownership.
The dispute has also moved into the criminal justice system.
Investigators have proposed charges against Wainaina and Mwangi, including conspiracy to defraud, forgery, stealing and obtaining land registration by false pretences.
Despite the proposed charges, the two have separately asked the High Court to stop their prosecution.
Both the civil case over ownership of the property and the criminal proceedings remain pending before the courts.
