Battle for control of multi-billion Tatu City goes international

Intrigues surrounding the troubled multi-billion-shilling Tatu City project will now go international with majority shareholder Stephen Jennings claiming the boardroom wrangles were taking a diplomatic twist.

"The issue we are dealing with now is beyond the Kenyan courts," Mr Jennings said in a media conference on Thursday. The conference came a day after he and an American shareholder sued former top banker Nahashon Nyaga - now a church minister, over an alleged Sh9 billion fraud.

In the suit filed on Tuesday, the former Central Bank governor is accused of forging company details at the registry to enable him to annex 900 hectares (2,250 acres) from Tatu City.

Members of his New Covenant Convention Church and a daughter of his long-term cook are among the beneficiaries allotted the land, according to the court filings.

"We have never been extorted, we will never be extorted," an angry Jennings said, adding that if they allowed Nyaga to take away any asset, then there would be 'a queue around the block' with similar demands.

In yet another intriguing twist in the unending boardroom drama, Jennings' faction on Thursday and Friday placed a public announcement warning the public against dealing with Tatu City's former Chief Executive Lucas Omariba, whom they now call an impostor.

Mr Omariba was sacked earlier this year when Jennings sought to replace Nyaga as chairman. Nyaga immediately moved to court to contest the ouster. Other litigants who have dragged the proposed private city to the courts like Stephen Mwagiru got nothing, he said, adding that history had emboldened him and other international investors.

Court cases

But the latest turn of events, where Jennings wants the shareholder disagreements and squabbles determined by an international court, points to growing desperation in the New Zealander, following a series of court cases since inception of the project over five years ago. The avenues he will be exploring include engaging top government officials from various countries whose citizens are shareholders in the $3 billion project, and filing the civil suit before a court in a different jurisdiction - which he did not disclose immediately.

"It is going to be a surprise move against our detractors," he said when asked about the immediate interventions he will seek to win the battle for the multi-billion-shilling project.

Tatu City, Kenya's first private municipality, has been held back by dozens of legal suits that have delayed the selling of the project land and development of basic infrastructure like roads and sewerage systems.

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