• Seeking services of professional investigators, Omondi said, will cost one some money, but they can be sure of the deals they get into after that.
• Omondi said a title deed may seem genuine because it was input in the system to stay there for the duration one needs it to be there for the purposes of duping unsuspecting buyers.
Image: BRIAN OTIENO
Lack of due diligence has led to loss of billions of shillings in fake gold scandals and land disputes, a security expert has said.
Douglas Omondi, a private detective at Espiar Investigators, urged Kenyans to ask themselves the right questions and seek help from professionals before conducting deals that seem too good to let pass.
“I feel for those who buy land only for them to later realise they are the third or fourth buyers of the same piece of land,” he said.
Omondi, who spoke in his office in Nyali, said despite the government’s effort to digitise all land records, there are still people who manipulate the system to hoodwink potential buyers.
“Not all lands officers are good and not all are bad. There are only a few elements who are rogue and work in cahoots with brokers and wheeler-dealers in the quest for a quick buck,” he said.
Omondi said a title deed may seem genuine because it was input in the system to stay there for the duration one needs it to be there for the purposes of duping unsuspecting buyers.
“Then after the transaction is done, it is removed from the system so that when any dispute arises, because definitely it will, the system will not show it anymore upon a search. That is when you realise even genuine title deeds can be fake,” he said.
However, not all is lost, Omondi said.
Seeking services of professional investigators, Omondi said, will cost one some money, but they can be sure of the deals they get into after that.
He said there is need for government to vet all the officers it employs to deal with the public.
“For the buyers, they need to engage the legal services and professional private investigators, who are able to do due diligence on their behalf,” Omondi said.
He said although many people find it expensive to deal with private investigators, and deem it too much trouble, it is more economical to engage them in the long-run.
“With due diligence, you will know not only the authenticity of the land in question but also other seemingly needless factors like hostility of the area the land is located, advantages or disadvantages of the land or even the history of the land,” Omondi.
Many people claiming to be real estate agents end up collecting hundreds of millions of shillings from people who hope to invest in houses for their future only to end up having bought hot air, when the supposed agents disappear with their hard-earned, he said.
“Even some fake Saccos have in the past duped people into giving them millions of shillings in savings, only for them to close shop. But how do you decipher whether such an institution is the real thing? A private investigator will come in handy then,” Omondi said.
There are more than 30 private investigation companies in Kenya and all specialise in different sectors including crime, land cases and financial investigations.
A private investigator mostly charges between Sh5,000 and Sh20,000 a day depending on the matter at hand and the location of the investigation.
In Mombasa, he said, the Nyumba Kumi initiative is more vibrant than in other areas but in some cases, the ambassadors are part and parcel of the land cartels.
He said in most cases, buyers do not care to look at the history of the land they have identified for purchase and may end up being slapped with land rates they did not anticipate because the previous owner had not been paying the land rates or the lease was about to expire.
“The secret is in due diligence,” he said.