The country is holding interview sessions for the position of next Chief Justice. However, it is Senior Counsel Fred Ngatia who has caught the attention of many.
An erudite scholar and one of the country’s top lawyers, Mr. Ngatia has been in the national limelight for the last twenty years, the highest-profile ones being in 2006, 2013 and in 2017 when he represented President Uhuru Kenyatta at the Supreme Court.
In 2006, the senior lawyer was adversely mentioned by a witness at the Kariuku commission, as among those who helped the Artur brothers during their stay in Kenya. The commission reported lawyer Ngatia was said to be the organiser of a press conference at the JKIA, addressed by Artur Margayan, and his brother Sargasyan.
The press conference was a stage-managed affair meant to dupe Kenyans the two mercenaries had arrived from Dubai, yet they had been staying in the country all along. Even though Mr. Ngatia was playing his role as a lawyer and representing the legal interests of the Artur brothers, there are those who questioned whether he knew the two were involved in shoddy businesses in Nairobi and willingly ignored.
According to the Artur Brothers Report presented to the National Assembly in 2007, the two Armenians had a direct connection with the government. Mary Wambui, who was a Nyeri Town MP then, and her daughter Winnie Wangui Mwai were close associates of Sargasyan and Margaryan.
