Nairobi businessman William Osewe, the owner of the popular K’Ranalo Foods Restaurant, has been offered reprieve after the Court of Appeal blocked the forced sale of his Ksh2 billion property which includes the stalled four-star Bluewater Hotel in Kisumu and an apartment in Nairobi’s South C estate.
The High Court had given a local bank the green light to auction the property over a Ksh 330 million loan but the Court of Appeal has ruled that the family had substantive arguments to stop the process.
Osewe has now been given 45 days to deposit Ksh 25 million with the court.
Owner of K’Osewe Ranalo Foods restaurant William Osewe.
File The family argued that they had continued to service the loan despite the Covid-19 pandemic’s effect on the economy but the bank insisted that the loan was in default.
Osewe and his wife also told the court that they would suffer huge losses in the auction because the property was worth four times the loan amount.
The Bluewater Hotel in Kisumu sits on a prime beachfront and is part of a deal to be added to the international Marriott franchise by 2022.
The proprietor told the judges that the deal would fail if the auction was allowed but the bank argued that it was not a party to the transaction.
The bank has been trying to auction the property since 2018 but court battles have dragged the process.
Osewe managed to build his billion shilling hotel empire from selling mshikaki and njugu karanga most weekends in Kaloneni estate in the 1970s.
His first hotel was set up under a tree in Kaloleni and then moved to Kenya Railways in Nairobi.
The eatery thrived such that he moved premises to Kenya Railways in Nairobi and then Cameo Cinema along Kenyatta Avenue and on to its current location along Kimathi Street.
Trading as Ranalo Foods, K’Osewe’s grew to comprise four restaurants, a block of flats in South C and the Blue Waters Hotel in Kisumu-where his children are shareholders alongside their mother.
The family has gone through turbulent times in the past three years. On July 30, 2020, auctioneers sold hundreds of items at Ranalo Foods Upper Hill, marking the end of the branch.
Shortly after opening the Ranalo Foods branch in Kisumu the same year, it emerged that the restaurant was on Kenya Railways land. It was demolished but later reopened at another location.
K’Osewe Ronalo Foods located alongside Kimathi Streets, Nairobi which runs Blue Waters Hotel in Kisumu
File
