On November 20, 2018, Dr Susan Mboya pushed back against the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), saying the agency had wrongly folded her personal property into its investigation of former Nairobi governor Dr Evans Kidero.
Her complaint, set out in an affidavit filed in court, is that the anti-graft body treated her as if she were part of Kidero’s assets while probing his source of wealth. She says she has been married to Kidero for seven years, but had already acquired property before the marriage and has continued to buy more using her own resources.
Mboya argues that she is a separate legal person and should not have her property linked to Kidero simply because of the marriage. In the affidavit, she says the commission acted as though she were “an appendage” to Kidero, despite her own income and independent ownership of assets.
According to The Star, she also challenged the seizure of items she says were personal to her and unrelated to the investigation. Among the documents she says were taken are her will, personal income records, investment mortgage papers and records of ongoing transactions.
She further claims the commission’s continued handling of her private material amounts to a violation of her rights. Mboya says the documents are confidential and that it is unfair for the EACC to keep them despite an order for their immediate release.
“I am a professional lady of international standing with a substantial income of my own and not just a mere appendage and property of Kidero who is a dependent spouse as portrayed in the cations of the commission in lumping kidero’s affairs with mine,” she says.
“These documents and items are of a very personal and confidential nature and it is very prejudicial to me that the same were seized and continue being held by the commission notwithstanding the order for their immediate release to me,” she adds.
The dispute raises a wider question over how far the EACC can go when investigating a public official’s wealth, especially where a spouse insists that some assets and records are entirely separate from the case.
