Police recover Sh17m stolen from KCB Thika branch

Mystery surrounds the recovery of part of the Sh50 million heist stolen last week from the Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), Thika branch.

Reports indicate that part of the money was found in a rented house in Juja town on Saturday afternoon.

Police have released the names of the three suspects  arrested on Friday. Charles Mwangi Murakaru, Halford Munene Murakaru and Julius Wainaina will appear in court today.

Sh17,135,000, 1311 US dollars, 340 Great Britain Pounds, 5 Canadian Dollars, 85 Australia dollars, 46,000 Tanzania shillings, 40 South Africa rand  and  20,000 Ugandan shillings was recovered from the house.

All the cash has been transferred to KCB headquarters Nairobi for safe custody. Sources say police also also recovered tools and national identity cards.

The ownerof the building where the money was recovered declined to give his name but told the Standard that it was  true that some money was recovered in one of his houses which he had rented to a woman.

He said the woman had rented the house in the course of the week and lived there  for more than two days.

He said the woman had rented the one bedroom house which goes for Sh10, 500 a month and paid rent for one month.

The landlord said the police broke in to the house on Saturday and found a lot of money adding he did not even know the lady since she was just a tenant just like the rest.

He said the woman came looking for a house and was given the account number where she deposited the money for one month rent and later brought the banking slip to the caretaker

“Police broke in to the house and found a lot of money which they counted for three hours. They did not however arrest anyone as there was no one in the house but just went away with the money,” said the landlord.

A tenant in the building who also sought anonymity said it was indeed true that some money was found in the house by the police.

“We saw the police carry the money from the house belonging to a woman who was new in the building in three bags and put it in some of the vehicles which were parked outside,” said the tenant.

The tenant corroborated the account of the landlord that the owner of the house was new saying the woman moved in on Wednesday 22.

Some of the boda boda operators stationed near the house said the police camped at the house as early as 6 am on Saturday.

“We saw several private cars come and camp near the house. From the look of things, they seemed to be either flying Squad or CID officers. At first we did not know who they were and what they wanted but later saw several police vehicles came and that is when we heard that the money that was stolen from a bank in Thika had been found,”said a boda boda rider.

Last week, a gang of robbers pulled one of the most dramatic heists snatching Sh50 million from KCB Thika branch without firing a single shot.

The criminals, whose number has not yet been established, used a tunnel they had dug from the adjacent Thika City Friendly Stalls building to access the bank’s strongroom.

The tunnel, measuring about 30 metres long and 10 metres deep, was just 20 metres from the Thika Police Station that sits next to the bank.