Blog Archive

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

The case of disappearing land...

One of the pitfalls of investing in 3 World countries esp Africa is not knowing what you bought or didn't buy...

Delta Resources - backed by Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries - purchased land in Nairobi that is 30% less than what they thought they were buying!

The NSSF bought this land during the KANU years when KANU was rewarding its loyalists by raping Kenyans (not that PNU or NARC did any better) left, right & center.

So now the NSSF might have to give back KES 400 million (29% of the sale price) to Delta Resources.

What I find curious is that Delta did not dispute the 'error' earlier since you do not buy land at $11mn/ha and trust the seller before you survey it! Or was Delta Resources toying with NSSF all along while waiting to spring on them? Of course, NSSF is also at fault by selling what they do not own aka fraud.

1 comment:

bankelele said...

These errors do happen. Often they start with a fraud in the original titles - where valuers or surveyors are compromised (say around the mid 90's), that is not discovered until many years later, ultimately at the point of sale. everyoen relies on documents that pass across their desks - auditors, bankers, valuers, and no one goes out to kick the tires (in this case measure the plot) - even where $20m is involved [and do the Libyans know what they are buying?]