FROZEN

The founder and CEO of Kimberley Group Housing Limited Mrs Mabel Marks has had her assets estimated at £4.2 million frozen as a fraud case involving the home office is investigated. Mabel a self made millionaire founded and managed the company which owns properties valued at more than at £15 million (about Sh2 billion) in the UK and US. These include 60 houses in the UK, eight acres of land in Bedfordshire, England, 10 apartments in Florida, USA, and another seven and a half acres of land in the US. Quite an achievement for the Kakamega-born Mabel Marks (maiden name Lusanji Muruli).

Aged 43, she first went to the UK in the early 1990s, after quitting teaching at Kikambala Primary School in Kilifi. She studied assertive skills, information and technology communication and English at North West London and University of Brunnel.

Mark’s dream, then, she says, was to continue teaching in the UK. "With hindsight, that must have been the biggest joke of my life."

She charted a different career course, working as an immigration advisor. It was while advising students and asylum seekers that the capitalist bug bit her. Her job entailed assessing the conditions in which the asylum seekers lived.

"My heart bled every time I saw the pathetic situation these young people had to live in with while those accommodating them were paid handsomely," she says.

Marks decided to challenge this by providing humane accommodation, a chance for education, medical health and social orientation.

She sought contracts from the local authorities to provide these services, thus Kimberley Group was born. That was in 2000. In 2006 Kimberley Housing Group was appointed by the Home Office to provide accommodation for asylum seekers who have failed to secure a stay in the UK.

To provide accommodation, she needed houses, so with her meagre savings, she bought her first property on mortgage.

The houses would multiply as her contracts were extended. Now, she caters for over 260 youngsters and 50 families.

She says that she learnt that the world's 1,000 wealthiest people made their riches through buying property and "we had to follow in their footsteps”.

She was living her dream until one day when the tables were turned and her contract discontinued at the Home office according to insiders it was purely on racial grounds. The person who took over the contracts had used bribery and during his investigation Marks got caught up in the mess and her assets frozen. A mess which insiders say will come to an end and the truth shall set Mabel free and everyone will know that she is innocent

Mabel was a giver and took part in so many charitable events within the Kenyan society in Britain and in Kenya. It is with this spirit that Kenyans and well wishers have organised a fundraising to raise her legal fees. The fundraising will be on the 15th May 2010 at the women and orphans in East London.