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Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) now wants more time to introduce new suspects in the case where 70-year-old widow is battling for her Sh150 million property.

DPP wants to Introduce more suspects before the hearing of the  case  where bank staff were charged with defrauding widow Alice Wanjiru of her property begins.Chief Magistrate Francis Andayi directed DPP to do so by January 28.

In August, five people were charged at the Milimani Law Courts with conspiracy to defraud the widow of Sh150 million.Amos Mugweru, Peter Kefa, Paul Mwangi, Robert Waweru, Esther Muthoni and Tom Jaseme denied three counts of conspiracy to defraud, stealing and forgery.

Mugweru and Jaseme are said to be credit officers at Faulu Bank.In the first count, they were charged for jointly conspiring to defraud Wanjiru by auctioning her house in Huruma worth Sh150 million between May 30, 2015 and March 28, 2018.

The second count indicated that between August 8, 2014 and April 11, 2015, at Faulu’s head office in Nairobi, Mugweru stole Sh22 million belonging to Wanjiru.

Muthoni also faced a forgery charge after the court was informed that on May 23, 2015, she forged Wanjiru’s signature on a bank loan application form.Wanjiru has filed a civil suit against the bank account very the said property.

 The 70-year-old widow is battling to save the said property after it was auctioned by the bank through Antique Auctions to recover a debt of Sh65 million.

Wanjiru has accused Faulu Bank of a well-calculated scheme to defraud her the said property which is located at Jonsaga, Huruma Estate in Nairobi County.

According to her, she bought the property which was then a three-storey building, in 1991 from Jason Mwangi at Sh16 million and developed it to four more storeys.

“Since I wanted to develop the property, I charged the property and took a loan of sh 65 million from Faulu Microfinance Bank to do final touches on the building,” she said in court documents. 

Wanjiru says the bank allowed her to take the third loan since she had promptly repaid the first two loans she had taken from the bank.“Upon getting the third loan, the bank took control of the rental income. It was supposed to account for the rental income and provide me with my statement on loan repayment status,” she said in court documents.

However she claims problem started when the manager handling her account was transferred from Ongata Rongai where her account was to Thika Branch.

“My efforts to have my account transferred to the manager’s Thika station were thwarted by the bank. The bank also refused to give me my statements to show how it was collecting the rental income and the loan repayment schedule,” she said.

She says at one time, she discovered the bank had debited   her sh 6 million which was done by some crooked bank officials out to defraud her.

She claimed that in March 2017, an auction advert was circulated by Antique Auctions under instructions from the bank to allegedly recover Sh73 million when the statements indicated she only had an outstanding loan of Sh7 million.

Antique Auctions went ahead and sold the property to Oksama Investment Supplies Limited, which is now laying claim to the property.

She wrote to the Banking Fraud Investigation Department to complain about Faulu’s misconduct who after investigation arrested the said accused persons.