Nathan Lloyd Ndung’u, the owner of the now defunct DN International, a real estate development company, has been arrested in Nairobi over a fraud case he faces in Rwanda. According to a report by Kenyas Business Daily, which is owned by Nation Media Group, Ndung’u was arrested this week as he arrived in Nairobi from a foreign country. He is a subject of an Interpol Red Notice following a case in which he was tried in Rwanda and sentenced in absentia to five years in prison. This was after he was convicted of defrauding property buyers from a real estate project by his company. Ndung’u, whose firm DN International was involved with at least two residential housing projects, fled Rwanda in 2011 after an investigation was commissioned over fraud allegations. Reports indicate that he was arrested as he landed from the US and was presented before a Nairobi court on Wednesday, February 2. The Kenyan prosecution, led by Catherine Mwaniki, made an application to detain him at the Inland Container Depot Police Station for 21 days, pending a formal extradition request from Rwanda. However, through his lawyers, he opposed the detention, saying he should be released on bail. The prosecutor opposed his release saying he was a flight risk given he had left Kenya while an international arrest warrant was issued. The prosecution argued that with dual citizenship [Kenyan and American], Ndung’u might head back to the US. Milimani Court Senior principal magistrate Bernard Ochoi is set to rule on the application on February 4. The background In 2010, DN International embarked on a project that would see the firm complete construction of over 50 residential housing units valued at Rwf75 million each. The new homeowners, some of whom had made prior down payment, were promised to have their houses by the end of that year. However the company’s project dubbed ‘Green Park Villas’, was never completed and Ndung’u fled the country. When the company folded, as a financier of the project, KCB seized the incomplete estate in an effort to recover a loan worth Rwf1.5 billion the developer had taken to fund the estate. But the bank did not take care of paying those who supplied construction materials or the prospective homeowners who had made down payment on the houses. As a result, people who had delivered supplies and those who bought homes from the defunct DN International launched a lawsuit against the real estate developer. The case also involved Kenya Commercial Bank and Rwanda Development Board (RDB) who demanded for over Rwf780 million in compensation.
