28th of July 2022, Thursday Rigathi Gachagua, the running partner of Deputy President William Ruto, has been told to return the Sh200 million to the government.
Judge Esther Maina of the Milimani Law Courts stated on Thursday that she is confident the questioned funds are the proceeds of crime and are therefore susceptible to forfeiture to the State.
Gachagua has acknowledged getting the money through contract awards from government organizations and agencies.
However, the court ruled that there was no evidence to suggest he had a deal with the State.
Reacting to the ruling on Facebook, Gachagua accused Justice Maina of being biased and said he will head to the Court of Appeal to appeal the decision.
Here is Rigathi Gachagua‘s statement
“The judgment today by Justice Esther Maina, in my case against the Asset Recovery Agency, did not come as a surprise to me and my Lawyers.
The Judge was biased against us from the word go and threw caution to the wind by conducting a sham trial.
Against the rules of evidence, she refused our application to cross-examine the Investigator in order to test the veracity of his allegations.
She ruled that all evidence should be through affidavits and rejected oral evidence.
She refused my request to call witnesses to testify on how I got my money.
She has made a ruling relying solely on the allegations by the State without giving us an opportunity to put the allegations to test as per the known practice all over the world.
The Judge again declined our request to highlight our submissions against the known and accepted practice all over the world.
The judgement was hastily rushed ten days before the elections in a futile attempt to undermine my candidature in the coming elections and dent my sterling performance in the running mates debate last week.
I have instructed my Lawyers to immediately file an appeal in the Court of Appeal to stay the orders and set aside the judgement.
