Two days after a Nairobi court ruled that Businessman Prafur Kumar’s multi-million Grand Manor Hotel in Gigiri poses a danger to UN headquarters and the US embassy, the government has moved to demolish it.
This year’s biggest heartbreaker, SANY made its way to the hotel’s location at dawn and started pulling down the establishment months after businessman Rameshchandra Govind Gorasia’s Airgate Mall popularly known as Taj Mall and Edermann’s properties’ Seefar Apartments were brought down for different reasons.
The Nairobi County Government was ordered to bring down the building which sits between The High Commission of Botswana and the Embassy of Morocco.
Grand Manor’s writing was already on the wall. On August 20, Ethics and Anti-Corruption Comission (EACC) sleuths arrested Mr Kumar in Kilifi after he allegedly trying to bribe Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko to allow expansion of the construction with Ksh 1 million.
He was arraigned in court and charged for the offence on August 24 but denied the charges and was released on a Ksh1 million bond.
Further, foreign missions in Kenya’s diplomacy nerve centre have in the past written to City Hall asking the county government not to allow its construction.
