PS Ronoh Linked To Alleged Miwani Sugar Land Fraud

A scandal that has festered for three decades in the sugarcane heartlands of Kisumu County has exploded into the national spotlight, with Agriculture Principal Secretary Dr Kipronoh Ronoh facing explosive accusations that he used the weight of a Cabinet decision to hand over Kenya’s most contested public land to a private company whose claim to ownership rests on a fabricated court order, a phantom creditor and an unverified auction.

The allegations are contained in a formal petition tabled before the National Assembly by Suba South Member of Parliament Caroli Omondi, acting on behalf of petitioner Charles Osewe. The petition demands that Parliament investigate what the legislator calls a brazen conspiracy to defraud the Kenyan public of a 10,000-acre prime nucleus estate that communities in Kano and Nandi donated generations ago to support the establishment of Kenya’s oldest sugar factory, Miwani Sugar Company.

At the heart of the controversy is a letter dated April 11, 2025, signed by Dr Ronoh and addressed to the Kenya Sugar Board (KSB). In that letter, the PS directs the KSB to instruct its advocates to sign a consent recognising Crossley Holdings Limited as the lawful owner of the land, identified as LR No. 7545/3 (IR. 21038). What makes the directive extraordinary, according to the petition, is that the PS claims to be acting on a Cabinet decision of December 17, 2024, meaning the country’s highest executive decision-making body allegedly sanctioned the transfer of disputed public land to a private entity, even as the matter remains actively before the courts.

The Ghost Who Started It All

The origins of the land dispute read like a thriller. In 1993, a man named Nagendra Saxena filed a suit at Kisumu High Court against Miwani Sugar Company, claiming the firm owed him Sh114 million for consultancy services. Saxena never appeared in court in person. He was never seen anywhere in Kenya. According to documents filed in Parliament, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) and the Department of Immigration separately launched efforts to trace Saxena both in Kenya and in India. All three agencies came up empty. The man, in the blunt assessment of Omondi and fellow ODM legislator Onyango Koyoo of Muhoroni, simply does not exist.

“Saxena has never been seen in court or anywhere. Both the EACC and DCI have tried and failed to trace him in Kenya or in India,” Omondi told journalists at Parliament Buildings in April 2025. The MP alleges that Saxena was a front for Bire, associated with Kibos Sugar and Allied Industries, a company that would later lease the state-owned Chemelil Sugar Factory from the government.

Despite the suit’s dubious foundations, it dragged on for over a decade. With interest accumulating at 20 percent annually, what started as a Sh40 million claim reportedly ballooned to over Sh1 billion by 2007. Miwani Sugar Company, already crippled and under receivership since 2001, failed to mount a proper defence, and the High Court authorised an auction of the company’s assets to recover the claimed debt.

A Christmas Eve Auction No One Can Explain

On December 24, 2007, Christmas Eve, a public auction was conducted and Crossley Holdings Limited emerged as the winning bidder for the 9,394-acre nucleus estate at Sh752 million. The purchase price was remarkable on two counts: the land had been valued at Sh696 million, meaning Crossley ostensibly bid above valuation, yet not a single shilling of that Sh752 million has ever been produced in evidence, according to both the DCI and parliamentary documents.

“No evidence has ever been produced as to if and to whom the Sh752 million was paid,” the petition states. Former Agriculture PS Hamadi Boga confirmed to Parliament in October 2020 that Crossley not only failed to pay the Sh742 million auction amount but also did not pay the Sh1.5 million bidding deposit. The state launched formal proceedings to repossess the land, with Boga telling legislators at the time that plans to cancel Crossley’s provisional title were at an advanced stage.

The auction’s legitimacy was further destroyed in the Court of Appeal. Justice Olga Sewe, then heading the Judiciary in Kisumu, testified that the original court order on which the auction was based was a forgery. The case file itself had vanished from court records. On July 29, 2011, the Court of Appeal nullified the entire transaction and reaffirmed that the land belonged to Miwani Sugar Company. The deputy court registrar believed to have orchestrated the forged order was removed from the Judiciary and charged with conspiracy to defraud alongside Crossley Holdings, its directors and employees, in a Kisumu Magistrates Court.

The Acquittals, The Appeals, The Contradictions

The criminal proceedings that followed proved long and torturous. In 2019, a Kisumu magistrates court acquitted Crossley Holdings and several co-accused, including Sukhwinder Singh Chatte, the chairman of Kibos Sugar and Allied Industries, finding that the EACC investigation had been shoddy. Two co-accused, former magistrate Abdulkadir Elkindy and revenue officer Moses Osewe, were found to have a case to answer. Elkindy stood accused of using his position as deputy registrar of Kisumu High Court to fraudulently order the transfer of the land, while Osewe faced charges of improperly clearing land rates.

The Director of Public Prosecutions appealed the acquittals to the High Court, which in 2019 reversed the magistrate’s decision and directed that all accused be placed on their defence. The accused then escalated the fight to the Court of Appeal, which ultimately restored the original acquittals in 2021, ruling that the evidence left too much doubt.

Emboldened, Crossley returned to civil court. In October 2021, Justice Anthony Ombwayo of the Environment and Land Court in Kisumu ruled in Crossley’s favour, declaring the company the valid landowner and ordering Miwani Sugar to vacate within 60 days. The government and Miwani appealed, creating two directly conflicting court judgements: the Court of Appeal’s 2011 ruling affirming public ownership versus Ombwayo’s 2021 ruling in favour of Crossley. It was this legal limbo that Agriculture CS Mutahi Kagwe acknowledged before Parliament in late 2025 as making the matter “legally complex.”

Cabinet’s Invisible Hand

It is against this turbulent legal backdrop that PS Ronoh’s April 2025 letter carries its most explosive charge. By invoking a purported Cabinet decision of December 17, 2024, and directing the Kenya Sugar Board to facilitate the signing of a court consent recognising Crossley as owner, Ronoh effectively inserted the country’s Cabinet into an active judicial dispute. Legal experts and opposition legislators have questioned whether the Cabinet has the constitutional authority to override pending court proceedings.

“The Cabinet’s involvement in a matter that is actively before the courts is troubling and unacceptable,” Omondi told journalists. The MP argued that the Cabinet’s alleged decision went against the spirit of judicial independence and defied existing court orders still in force from the Court of Appeal.

The petition further reveals that the Office of the Attorney-General, led by Dorcas Oduor, had forwarded a draft consent to be filed in court for approval by all parties. But on May 6, 2025, the law firm of Owiti, Otieno and Ragot, acting for Miwani Sugar, refused to sign the consent, citing legal and ethical reasons. In a letter to the Receiver Manager of Miwani Sugar, lawyer David Otieno said the firm had consistently held the position that the 2007 transaction was marred by fraud.

Communities Left to Burn

The human cost of the dispute has already been written in blood. In February 2022, an auctioneer hired by Crossley Holdings attempted to execute a court order evicting workers and occupants from the land, triggering a violent confrontation that left two people dead, several others injured, two vehicles torched and more than 2,000 acres of sugar cane reduced to ash. The upheaval shocked the nation and underscored the extent to which local communities regard the land as theirs by right of historical contribution.

“This land was donated by the Kano and Nandi communities as a nucleus estate for the Miwani Sugar factory. It was never sold to anyone,” Omondi told a press conference at Parliament in April 2025. “They want to take the only economic lifeline remaining for these people. The land that would transform the lives of Western Kenya is being handed to private interests through fraud.”

Kisumu Governor Professor Anyang Nyong’o has also expressed alarm, noting that the transfer of the nucleus land was happening through “opaque arrangements” even as litigation continued. He pointedly flagged the fact that Kibos Sugar, whose chairman Sukhwinder Singh Chatte was among those prosecuted in the criminal case, had been awarded the lease for Chemelil Sugar Factory by the same government. The petition before Parliament makes no formal allegation of a connection between the government’s leasing decisions and the Crossley land controversy, but the proximity of the two transactions has drawn intense scrutiny.

What Parliament Is Being Asked to Do

The petition before the National Assembly is sweeping in its demands. MP Omondi is asking the relevant parliamentary committee to direct the Registrar of Persons and the Department of Immigration to formally investigate and report on whether Nagendra Saxena exists at all. The committee is also being asked to compel Attorney-General Dorcas Oduor to submit a full written legal opinion on all court cases related to the land, and to investigate in collaboration with the Business Registration Service the full ownership history of Crossley Holdings Limited and its sister company Allied Industries Limited.

Further, Omondi wants the National Assembly to formally investigate the official conduct of both current and former public servants in the National Treasury, Ministry of Agriculture and the State Law Office in connection with the case. The Cabinet Secretaries for National Treasury and Agriculture, and the Attorney-General, are specifically named in the call to protect and preserve the land as a public asset.

The petition does not stop there. It also requests a complete accounting of the outcome of all criminal investigations into the suspected forgery and fraud connected to the auction, including the fate of the prosecution of the former deputy court registrar.

The Questions PS Ronoh Must Answer

Dr Ronoh’s letter to the Kenya Sugar Board represents the most direct link between the state apparatus and the alleged attempt to settle the land controversy in Crossley’s favour. For critics, a senior government official directing a state institution to facilitate the transfer of contested public land to a company with a criminal prosecution history and no proven payment record crosses a line that demands explanation.

“The petition is anchored on court orders up to the Court of Appeal and asks why, despite those orders, the PS would write to the Sugar Board asking it to recognise Crossley Holdings,” the petition reads. The petitioner’s position is blunt: the Cabinet decision, if it exists as described by Ronoh, is ultra vires and cannot override standing judicial pronouncements.

As of the time of going to press, PS Ronoh and the Ministry of Agriculture had not publicly responded to the specific allegations raised in the parliamentary petition. The Star sought comment from the ministry but had not received a response by the time of publication.

What is clear is that Kenya’s oldest sugar factory, established in 1922 on land that Luo and Kalenjin communities contributed in good faith, now sits at the centre of a legal, political and criminal controversy that has defeated three decades of investigation, multiple court decisions and now threatens to consume an Agriculture PS and question the integrity of Cabinet itself.

Parliament, for now, holds the last card.

TIMELINE OF THE MIWANI LAND SAGA

1922 Miwani Sugar Mills established on Kano-Nandi community land

1988 Miwani placed under receivership after owners flee Kenya

1993 Phantom creditor Nagendra Saxena sues Miwani for Sh114m; never traced in Kenya or India

December 24, 2007 Christmas Eve auction; Crossley Holdings claims to pay Sh752m. No payment evidence produced

2010 Former deputy registrar, Crossley directors charged with conspiracy to defraud

July 29, 2011 Court of Appeal nullifies auction, reaffirms Miwani Sugar public ownership

October 2021 Kisumu Environment Court reverses course, declares Crossley valid owner

February 2022 Crossley attempts eviction; two killed, sugar fields torched by community

December 17, 2024 Cabinet allegedly decides to transfer land to Crossley (details not publicly released)

April 11, 2025 PS Ronoh’s letter directs KSB to sign consent recognising Crossley

May 6, 2025 Miwani Sugar’s lawyers refuse to sign, citing fraud and legal ethics

February 2026 Parliamentary petition formally tabled; Cabinet and PS Ronoh put on the spot