Wife and ‘other woman’ fight over late husband’s billions

A woman has come out to demand a share of the late Nakuru hotelier and billionaire businessman Stephen Kung’u’s estate. But the widow, Ms Grace Nyambura, has dismissed Joyce Wanjiku, saying her husband did not have another family.

Ms Nyambura, 71, told Lady Justice Abigail Mshila Wanjiku, who has filed a petition demanding a share of the late tycoon’s wealth together with her three children was not her co-wife, the Business Daily reports. The mother of six said she knew Ms Wanjiku as a worker at one of their businesses but insists that at no time did she (Wanjiku) have an affair with her husband.

Mr Kung’u died on April 6 leaving behind a vast estate of businesses in Nakuru and Nairobi as well as cash deposits in numerous bank accounts, all estimated in the billions. Ms Nyambura said she married Kung’u in church and was awarded a marriage certificate on November 7, 1984. She added that the union existed until the time of her husband’s death from diabetes.
In her five-page defence lodged in court, Ms Nyambura maintains that all the wealth they had was jointly acquired.

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She says her major contribution to the estate saw them rise from poverty to the league of billionaires, which is well documented in numerous registration and ownership certificates of various properties and companies in which she and Kung’u held shares. Among them are Kuka Investments that manages his residential estates in Nairobi and Kunste Hotel Limited.

On Tuesday, the widow pleaded for more time to document all properties and also engage with the “second family”, saying she was still in mourning hardly three months after her husband’s death.

And while lawyer Karanja Mbugua for Ms Wanjiku’s three children protested at the delay, saying Ms Nyambura and her children were plundering the estate, he said that he was hesitant to file the court case since he believed in dialogue.

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The widow said on learning of the claim by the three siblings, she lodged a search at the Registrar of Births offices where she discovered that the claimants had altered their names to include her husband’s name.

For instance, she claims that Naomi Wambui first acquired a birth certificate when she was born on April 2, 1979 and that her mother’s name was the sole one entered in the first registration. But matters changed on August 24, 2010 when she sought a second registration that introduced Kung’u’s name.

No explanation has been given for Ms Wanjiku’s second child, Rahab Wamucii, who acquired a late birth registration certificate on November 8, 2011 although she was born on August 27, 1983. The last child, Bilha Wanjiku Kung’u, was born eight months later on April 17, 1984.

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