Joel Kibunja, a Mombasa based businessman has sued his estranged wife for forging his signature and passport before selling their matrimonial home valued at Ksh10 million to a friend.
Kibunja accused his ex-wife Margaret Kirweya of transferring the ownership of the mansion to her friend Sarah Njiri in 2010 without his consent.
What followed is Njiri writing a letter to Kibunja and demanded that he quickly starts paying rent for his house which is located in Miritini in Mombasa County.
“The letter indicated that my property had already been sold and that it was time I start depositing rent to an account that was provided in the document,” said Kibunja.
According to him, the incident led to them divorcing with his wife in 2014, four years after they had married in a colorful wedding.
He first moved to court on March 24, 2011, and sought to stop the sale of the land saying that every document purported to be his including the signature were well forged.
This led to the arrest of Samuel Karimi who had worked in cohorts with Kirweya to forge the documents and passport which was scanned from a family portrait that was taken when the marriage was still in blossom.
It also emerged that Njiri was aware of the plans and they collaborated before finally sending the letter that he starts paying rent to him.
The trio; Njiri, Karimi and Kirweya were charged with four counts of forgery and also altering documents but they denied the charges.
Kirweya argued that she was the owner of the property in question as she had bought it from her earning from a clearing and forwarding business that she operates in the Coastal County.
However, Kibunja refuted the argument and told Mombasa Senior Magistrate Rita Amwayi that his wife only gave Sh350,000 for the purchase of the property.
He also said that after getting the letter he went to the land offices in Mombasa where it emerged that the property had been transferred to his ex-wife Kirweya and Njiri.
According to Kibunja he had never met Njiri in his life and wondered how her name ended up being part of the land’s ownership.
