by Thinus Ferreira
Kenya's Court of Appeal has denied the application of Canal+'s MultiChoice Kenya to move the drawn-out legal case with a contractor to the country's Supreme Court.
The court case centres around the alleged structural defects by the contractor, followed by the alleged fraud committed by MultiChoice and its hired experts to doctor a report around its ordered but then dumped office block in Kileleshwa.
MultiChoice Kenya is embroiled in a long-standing row with its contractor, Cementers Limited, over the office block that was found to have serious structural flaws.
MultiChoice contracted Cementers Ltd in 2015 but in June 2017 ended the contract after the building was declared unfit for occupation due to structural issues, leading MultiChoice to refuse full payment and eventually seek to demolish the structure.
The drama deepened when two experts involved in the project - principal architect Stanley Kebathi and Kariuki Muchemi of Interconcult Engineers Ltd - were accused of doctoring a report to help MultiChoice avoid paying the contractor.
In March 2022 they, together with Wilson Karaba, IEL, Conapex Consulting Engineers and SK Archplans were all charged with conspiring to falsify a structural integrity report in order to defraud, after Cementers went to court alleging MultiChoice's report was prejudiciously altered so that MultiChoice could skip payment.
These experts lost a court bid in early 2025 to stop their own criminal prosecution.
In January 2026 MultiChoice was granted leave to take its case to Kenya's Supreme Court after the Court of Appeal had previously blocked certain moves.
On 30 April, the three-judge Court of Appeal however, declined MultiChoice Kenya's request to further escalate specific parts of this KSh 895 million (R115 million) dispute to the Supreme Court, ruling that the company had not identified a unique point of law or public interest to justify the highest court's intervention at this stage.
A parallel attempt by the contractor to use the Environment and Land Court was dismissed because the court ruled it lacked jurisdiction; the dispute is legally classified as a commercial contract matter rather than a land ownership issue.
