Meru Senator Mithika Linturi who is embroiled in a bitter battle with his estranged wife Maryanne Kitany, now claims she is after some of his assets, conservatively valued at Sh762 million.
Responding to the divorce and matrimonial property dispute filed by Kitany, Linturi, in an affidavit filed at Milimani Commercial Court in civil suit number 78 of 2018, stated that he was never married Kitany since he has been in a monogamous marriage with Mercy Kaimenyi Mithika since April 8, 2000.
“The application and supporting affidavit are a cloak for Kitany’s vicious and fraudulent scheme to deprive me of my rights, interests, and ownership of the company Atticon Limited and other properties. I have never celebrated a customary marriage or any other form of marriage with her,” he states.
He adds that Kitany was in a monogamous marriage with her ex-husband up to and including January 3, 2016 and hence, legally incapable of entering into marriage with him in 2015 as alleged in her affidavit.
Part of Linturi’s presentation to court is an affidavit by his daughter who claims her father introduced Kitany to her and her siblings around December 2017.
“My father informed us that Kitany was a friend in distress. My father also informed us that he had previously allowed her temporary stay at our Runda home,” her affidavit states.
She says Kitany put on the façade of a nice, friendly and supportive guest and would in the initial days take them out for dinners and shopping.
According to her, things spiraled out of control in January this year, when Kitany found out that her daughter got a navel piercing with her help.
“She even accused me of being in possession of marijuana and orchestrated my detention at a rehabilitation centre on the pretext that I was addicted to marijuana, while her real motive was to create a wedge between my father and I,” read part of Linturi’s daughter’s affidavit.
She states that when she was released from the rehabilitation centre, Kitany warned her that she needed to ‘behave’ and refrain from sabotaging her (Kitany’s) relationship with her father.
“Ever since that warning, our relationship has been incompatible, like water and oil,” she adds.
On October, 25 last year, Kitany, a former chief of staff in Deputy President William Ruto’s office, obtained orders barring Linturi from entering their Runda home where they lived together.
Magistrate Orenge granted Kitany exclusive occupation of the shared residence known as Mae Ridge Country Villas House Number 16.
Come December 18, on expiry of the court order, Linturi stormed his Runda home with youth who ejected Kitany from the house. But on January 8, a court barred Linturi from accessing the home until a divorce petition filed by Kitany is heard and determined.
In court papers, Linturi says he purchased the Runda plot, L. R. No. 7785/1324, without help from Kitany, tabling documents to prove the money used to buy the land came from his account and that he has been paying a bank loan to this effect.
While Kitany, in her affidavit, claims she ‘developed’ the property by financing and supervising construction and renovation a property in Linturi’s rural home in 2010, Linturi disagrees with the claims.
Instead, he states that he first met the applicant “in mid- 2013, while she was working at the Office of the Deputy President, in the course of my official engagements with the office of the Deputy President.”
Kitany, in her affidavit, states that they have been married for five years, but Linturi differs, saying he first met her in November 2015, and she only moved into his house as a guest in December 2017.
Linturi further states that he granted Kitany’s request to temporarily establish a personal office in one of the rooms at his Atticon Limited company office, but that unknown to him, she took advantage of his co-director’s maternity leave and his absence to harass staff and meddle in the affairs of Atticon, somehow managing to access the company’s registration, business and other critical documents.
Linturi states that even though Kitany worked from his office, he later came to realize that in April 2017, “she fraudulently and dishonestly approached Douglas Kailanya, Dorothy Chepkrui, Billy Odero Onyango and Joseph Gitonga M’Limbine M’Aciuru and others purporting to offer them directorships in my company Atticon Limited, a company I registered in March 2007.
Attached is a copy of the forged extract of minutes of a purported meeting of the board of directors of Atticon dated 28th April 2018, which I retrieved from the registry of companies.
Emily Nkirote Buantai and I are the bona fide co-shareholders and co-directors of Atticon as can be confirmed from the company’s registry.”
He further states that the new directors who were added to his company were Kitany’s daughter, son, mother, brother, sister and her sister’s husband, all who are indicated in the forged minutes as having attended the meeting of 28th April 2017.
The Registrar of Companies wrote to all parties concerned, communicating the reversal of the changes that Kitany and her proxies had made on the shareholding and directorship of Atticon in May 2017.
But in her affidavit, when she sued Linturi, Kitany claims it is Linturi who is trying to push her out of Atticon Limited, a company she owns with her family members. Kitany claimed her differences with the senator arose after she discovered that the directorship of a firm in which she has interests had been changed and she wanted the senator and an assistant probed.
But Linturi responded by presenting to court copies of letters and affidavits by Douglas Kailanya and Joseph Gitonga M’Limbine M’Aciuru saying they were tricked into joining Atticon as directors by Kitany.
Just who is fooling who?