How William Ruto beat legal hurdles in race to the top

President-elect William Ruto at the ICC Courts in Amsterdam, Netherlands. [Boniface Thuku, Standard] When he finally takes the oath of office as Kenya's fifth president Tuesday, September 13, William Ruto will do so smug in the knowledge that his journey to the top has had its fair share of challenges. First elected as MP for Eldoret North in 1997, the DP beaten odds that could easily break the strongest of hearts. Ruto twice survived a stint in jail after he was accused of criminal acts on matters related to land. The unprecedented criminal trials at the International Criminal Court in the Hague Ruto's would follow, but like the other cases, it merely withered away, bringing out a unique career that has been sustained by fate. Right after he was sworn in as Deputy President in 2013, Ruto confronted perhaps his greatest challenge in public life that would have ended his career. In a record judgement, the High Court established that Ruto had fraudulently acquired a 100-acre piece of land from an IDP, Adrian Muteshi, at the height of the 2007-08 post-election violence. Muteshi has since died. In the ruling, delivered shortly after Ruto assumed the role of the DP, the High Court further ordered him to pay compensation to Muteshi who had claimed it was grabbed. Ruto, in his defence, had argued that the land had been legally transferred from Muteshi to a third party, Dorothy Yator, from whom he had purchased the land. "I order the DP to pay Sh5 million to the farmer as compensation... I conclusively find that Muteshi is the owner of the land," Justice Rose Ougo said in her judgement. "From the evidence before me, it is clear that there were fraudulent activities in the manner the land was sub-divided and sold," she added. Enduring luck The judge ordered Ruto to vacate the farm and pay compensation of Sh5 million. If Ruto survived the case, it is testament to his enduring luck that has been smiling on him ever since he joined politics. Ten years earlier, the Kibaki administration had dragged Ruto, then Eldoret North, into court and charged him with fraudulently obtaining Sh272 million from the Kenya Pipeline Corporation (KPC) by selling it plots in the Ngong Forest. He would survive the trial after a magistrate court acquitted him of land fraud charges alongside his two co-accused. Ruto was alleged to have received Sh96 million at intervals during the alleged transaction. In his ruling then Nairobi Chief Magistrate Gilbert Mutembei said the prosecution had failed to prove that the three received the money from KPC. However, it would later emerge that the prosecution had not summoned a crucial witness to testify. "The prosecution failed to produce in court the then Finance Manager Hellen Njue to give her evidence on how she paid out the money. It is, therefore, clear that none of the accused ever received any money from KPC. The prosecution has failed to prove its case thus all the accused persons have no case to answer," the magistrate ruled. While Ruto survived, Mutembei was not lucky. He was ravaged by senior members of the Judiciary who accused him of having failed to invoke powers under the law to compel Njue's appearance before his court. President-elect William Ruto at the ICC in the Hague. [File, Standard] The Judicial Service Commission rejected his application to become a judge arising from his own conduct at the trial. Although accused in 2004, the judgement of the case was tendered in 2010 when Ruto was a minister in the grand coalition government. Then an ODM member and a thorn in his party boss Raila Odinga's flesh, it was a situation nobody would have let him get away with. Raila would later suspend Ruto alongside Sam Ongeri from Cabinet. Ruto was accused of having been part of the maize scandal in which powerful individuals close to him received maize from the National Cereals and Produce Board at a throw away price but made a kill by selling them to flour millers. Ongeri was accused of having failed to explain the misappropriation of free primary education funds from donors. Former President Kibaki saved the two after he stated that Raila, in making the decision, had not consulted him. But the two were to close ranks and suspended Ruto from the Cabinet as Higher education minister. But it was the trial at the ICC that brought out the tenacity in the man who will today be sworn in as Kenya's fifth President. Ruto was among the six Kenyans ICC prosecutors charged with crimes linked to the 2007/08 post-election violence. He was Charged for murder, deportation and persecution of civilians. Ruto had to fight for his own survival after he found himself alone after the charges against four of his accomplices, including President Uhuru had been acquitted. And although the court would later throw out his case citing insufficient evidence, it refused to acquit him. Judges declared it a mistrial because of a "troubling incidence of witness interference and intolerable political meddling."

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