A dispute between pay TV firm MultiChoice and a local construction company has taken a new twist over plans to demolish a Sh895 million building that is the subject of an ongoing court case.
Trouble started last Saturday when the contractor, Cementers Ltd, warned against the demolition of the building in Kileleshwa, saying it might be used as evidence in a criminal case before a Nairobi magistrate.
MultiChoice, for its part, said it was complying with directives from the Nairobi County government to bring down the building after it was condemned due to safety concerns.
The firm hired Cementers to build the ultramodern office block but the parties fell out, with the former terminating the contract in June 2017.
That set in motion complex battles before an arbitrator and in civil and criminal courts.
“Any person who might have responded to the RFQ (Request for Quotation) is hereby put on notice about the risks involved in accepting any offer in the demolition of the building,” said a notice from Nderitu & Partners.
MultiChoice claimed the contractor’s work was substandard, leading to cracks on parts of the building. It allegedly hired a team of experts and their report faulted Cementers.
Last month, the experts – Kariuki Muchemi, Wilson Karaba and Stanley Kebathi – were charged with conspiring to falsify a structural integrity report as part of a plan to defraud.
They were charged alongside Interconsult Engineers, Conapex Consulting Engineers and SK Archplans.
Cementers, through senior counsel Wilfred Nderitu, warned against destroying the building, saying the court might order a site visit before determining which of the two parties was responsible for the dispute.
“The public is notified that by reason of the foregoing, the building may be required in evidence in the said criminal case and that it would therefore be a criminal offence punishable under Section 116 of the Penal Code for anyone to willfully destroy or demolish it or render it incapable of identification in its current state with intent to preventing it from being used in evidence in the criminal case,” Mr Nderitu said.
But MultiChoice said the contractor has not obtained any court order or applied to preserve the building for any alleged evidence. “The building is not an exhibit in any of the ongoing civil, arbitral and criminal cases between the parties,” MultiChoice said in a statement.
The report at the centre of the dispute stated that beams supporting parts of the building were sagging and columns cracking because the concrete used to put them up was not of the required strength as per the construction contract. This meant that Cementers was at fault for the defects.
But Cementers argued that the sagging beams were a structural engineering issue, hence Conapex was to blame.
The firm added that the report had been doctored but MultiChoice said the report, which is the opinion of the engineers, merely interprets independent tests professionally done by independent laboratories on the building.
The dispute is also the subject of proceedings before an arbitrator.
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