Firm accuses police of inaction in Malindi land dispute
Coast
By
David Odongo
| Jan 14, 2026
A company has protested over the failure by the police to resolve a case where their land in Malindi town has been occupied by a stranger.
The firm says that despite providing documents that prove they have owned the land since 2014, no action has been taken more than nine months after they first reported the matter to the Divisional Criminal Investigations Officer in Malindi.
IntraCity Safaris Limited Director Murangiri Njeru, in a letter to the Kilifi County Criminal Investigations Officer Robert Kiinge, said that they bought the property from a Norwegian family more than 10 years ago.
He said they were shocked when, on a routine visit to the property last April, they found someone had re-fenced it and installed new gates.
A search at the Lands office in Mombasa showed they were still registered as the owners.
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A letter to the police by Mr Rino Solberg, a Norwegian investor who runs agroforestry projects in Kenya and Uganda, indicates that he sold the property to Intracity Safaris 11 years ago. He bought it in 1980 and built two houses on it.
"I can prove that I rented out one house for over 10 years, between 1985 and 1995, to an American missionary couple while they carried out their missionary work in Malindi," he said.
The directors said they had not received any feedback from the police whatsoever, and do not know what documents the intruder was using to claim the property.
The firm disclosed that at one meeting in Malindi in July 2025, which was also attended by the person occupying the land, the DCIO promised to ask the Mombasa lands office to confirm which party held valid documents.
The exercise was expected to take a week and both parties agreed this would be a fair way to resolve the matter "but we've not heard anything about it since then."
In October, Njeru said they were informed that their case file had been transferred from Malindi to Kilifi - the County Headquarters - ostensibly because there was better investigations capacity there.
"We appreciate that they are required to confirm the veracity of our documents. But surely this cannot take nine months. We are particularly concerned because the intruder has been cutting down trees and demolishing houses. The damage he is doing to our property can never be remedied," Mr Njeru said in an interview with the Standard.
Land ownership disputes are common at the Coast, with Kilifi being particularly affected.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations Land Fraud Investigations Unit handles criminal acts such as forgery of title deeds, fraudulent land transfers and conspiracy to defraud related to land.
Civil aspects are handled by the judiciary's Environment and Land Court.