Controversial preacher Paul Mackenzie is a squatter on the expansive Shakahola ranch where mass graves containing close to 400 bodies have been discovered.

Lawyers representing the original owner of the ranch currently under receivership, the Chakama Ranching Company, and the official receiver, the government owned Business Registration Service (BRS), told the Senate ad hoc committee investigating the Shakahola massacre chaired by Tana River Senator Danson Mungatana that the controversial preacher who is currently in court over the mass deaths on the farm, moved to the land as a “high profile” squatter.

“Paul Mackenzie has turned out to be a high-profile squatter.

They all appeared in the land as squatters. The shareholders have even engaged some of them to vacate the premise but they did not,” said the counsel for the ranching company,

He dismissed reports that the controversial preacher owned part of the land where the mass graves have been found.

“The shareholders of Chakama Ranching Company Limited have neither been part of the activities of the Good News International Church led by Mackenzie nor acquiesced to the said activities or any form of encroachment on the property whatsoever.”

He was responding to a barrage of questions from the senators who wanted to know whether the company’s directors had anything to do with the mass graves discovered on the expansive land.

Local administration

“Paul Mackenzie has told us that the land is not his. You have to prove that you are not part of the planners and organisers of the massacre,” charged the committee’s Vice-chair Shakila Abdalla (nominated).

“There have always been squatters encroaching on our client’s land at any given time. The land is vast in size and unoccupied.

To date our clients have not be able to carry out any meaningful and or profitable activities on their property due to lack of funds,” Kaingu responded.

Kaingu told the senators that although the land belongs to Chakama Ranching Company, the land was placed under a receiver, the Business Registration Service (BRS), a government agency.

Mark Gakuru, the official receiver of the company on his part told the committee that Chakama ranching company has two main creditors namely Francis Mulwa who was seeking a Sh15million payment as legal fees and Continental Credit Finance Limited (Sh44.8 million plus interest) being a charge on the ranch.