A legal storm of historic proportions is gathering around Senior Counsel Fred Ojiambo and Paul Gachuhi senior partners at Kaplan &Stratton as explosive allegations of forgery and deception threaten to unravel reputations built over decades.
Eighty-year-old Senior Counsel Fred Ojiambo, a revered church elder at Nairobi Baptist Church and long celebrated as one of Kenya’s most formidable legal minds, is now staring down a stunning credibility crisis that threatens to shake his law firm’s legacy.
The veteran advocate ‘s partner has been dragged into a storm of controversy after being implicated in an alleged cover-up involving a sensational forgery claim at the prestigious law firm Kaplan & Stratton.
At the heart of the scandal is an accusation that his partner Gachuhi forged the will of former Attorney General James Karugu.
Kaplan &Stratton now finds it’s legacy under intense scrutiny, as questions mount over what it knew, when it knew it, and whether one of the country’s most respected legal institutions was used to mask an alleged fraud at the highest level.
This comes a day after Ojiambo was reported to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations(DCI), by Raphael Tuju over claims that he facilitated the filing of a false affidavit in a dispute pitting himmthe East African Development bank,(EADB).
While addressing the press on Monday, Tuju accused Ojiambo of putting his family at risk yet he claims to be a Christian.
“While Kaplan and Stratton over the years have managed to cultivate an image of a respected international law firm complete with a British sounding name stemming from the original owners, the firm has been in the news lately with senior partner Mr. Peter Gachuhi being investigated and prosecuted in respect of the forgery of the will of the late former AG Karugu. Fred Ojiambo operates behind a facade of being an upright born-again Christian lawyer who is a Church Elder carrying Bibles in the right hand. In reality, with the left hand he is filing documents filled with lies in court in support of a scheme to wrongfully deprive my family and I of properties acquired through decades of hard work”,he said
In a dramatic twist, six suspects who include a pastor from Nyandarua , are accused of forging the will of former Ag Karugu have appointed Ojiambo , the senior partner at Kaplan & Stratton to argue their case, despite mounting allegations of conflict of interest and claims that the firm has been entangled in what critics call a two-year cover-up.
At the center of the scandal is Ojiambo’s partner, Gachuhi, and six others accused by Victoria Nyambura Karugu ,the late AG’s daughter of orchestrating what she describes as an “elaborate cut-and-paste forgery” of her father’s will.
Nyambura has alleged that the contested document is riddled with “poor grammatical mistakes” inconsistent with her father’s writing style and worse, bears forged initials. Forensic examination, she claims, revealed it was a crude “cut and paste job.”
The AG Dorcas Oduor ,has now thrown the full weight of the State behind the prosecution, declaring that forgery is a criminal offence that must be investigated and prosecuted.
In court filings, the AG backed both the Director of Public Prosecutions and the DCI, terming attempts by Gachuhi and other suspects to halt investigations an “abuse of court process.”
Courtroom drama escalated when Ojiambo allegedly refused to hand over the disputed will to investigators, claiming he had a court order barring the DCI from accessing it.
That claim, according to filings, turned out to be false. Gachuhi was ultimately compelled to surrender the document for forensic examination.
Further controversy erupted when Ojiambo allegedly sought to have the DPP unlawfully interfere in the succession dispute ,a request that was flatly denied, leaving the senior counsel politically and professionally exposed.
Meanwhile, Nyambura has moved to formally join the case at the High Court, describing her earlier exclusion as “mischievous and calculated.”
She has filed hundreds of pages of evidence, including what she says are DCI findings that were withheld from Justice Mwamuye when the suspects secured ex parte orders halting their arraignment before the Chief Magistrate on charges of forgery and conspiracy to defraud
He is also facing a fresh call for investigation by former Cabinet Minister Raphael Tuju, who has accused him of fabricating evidence in a commercial dispute linked to the East African Development Bank.
If found culpable, both Ojiambo and Gachuhi risk professional ejection from Kaplan & Stratton for gross misconduct and potentially lengthy prison terms.
