Three charged with forgery in estate of former AG JB Karugu
The accused persons in court for plea, left to right Benjamin Karugu, Eric Karugu Mwaura and Jane Kabiu.
A Milimani Chief Magistrate’s Court released three siblings of former Attorney General James B Karugu accused of conspiracy to defraud on bail.
The accused are siblings of former Attorney General James Karugu.
They include Jane Wangechi Kabiu alias Jane Kabiu Gitau, Eric Mwaura Karugu, and Benjamin Githara Karugu. They were granted a bond of Sh1.5 million each with an alternative cash bail of Sh700,000.
Chief Magistrate Dolphina Alego further ordered that their passports be deposited in court.
The three are facing several charges linked to an alleged scheme dating back to 2012.
According to the prosecution, the accused jointly conspired to defraud Victoria Nyambura Karugu by transferring one ordinary share from Mathara Holdings Limited to Centurion Holdings Limited.
Jane Wangechi Kabiu is separately charged with forgery, after allegedly forging a Share Transfer Form purporting it to be a genuine document belonging to the complainant.
She also faces a charge of uttering a false document for allegedly presenting the forged Share Transfer Form to the Director General of the Business Registration Services.
In addition, Eric Mwaura Karugu and Benjamin Githara Karugu are charged with giving false information to a person employed in the public service.
Prosecution alleged that on February 5, 2025, at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations headquarters in Nairobi, the two falsely informed a DCI investigator that they had been given Share Transfer Forms to sign.
The matter will be mentioned on January 20, 2026, for pre-trial directions.
The fight for the multi-billion-shilling estate of Kenya’s second post-independence Attorney-General Karugu (JBK) intensified after the deceased’s first-born daughter Victoria Nyambura Karugu moved to block the distribution of his wealth based on a contested will.
Nyambura has moved to block the distribution of dividends from the late Karugu’s stake in Maramba Holdings Limited, which runs a tea factory business in Limuru.
This has escalated a feud that has created two antagonist groups.
On one side is Nyambura, who has handled the family’s business affairs as a chief executive officer since 2015, when their patriarch started to suffer from dementia. Nyambura in a letter to Maramba Holdings Limited chairman Joseph Tharao cautioned against the release of her late father’s dividend in the business, claiming that a will presented to the company is contested and is the subject of investigations by the DCI.