A Nairobi court has quashed an earlier application to withdraw fraud charges against British lawyer Guy Spencer Elms and directed that he take plea on October 7 in the long-running forged will case.
Appearing before Milimani Senior Principal Magistrate Ben Mark Ekhubi, Elms’ defense team asked the court for more time to file applications before their client could be called upon to answer to the charges.
“We would like an opportunity to interrogate the court’s decision. The complainant has no role in determining when the accused person will take plea. He has been out on personal bond, and we are ready to come back once we finish interrogating the court’s decision,” counsel for the accused told the court.
Prosecution stated that the State was ready to proceed but did not oppose the request to defer plea taking. The complainants, however, pushed for the matter to continue as earlier directed, noting that they had no intention of taking over the prosecutor’s role.
After hearing the rival arguments, the magistrate deferred plea taking to October 7, 2025, while maintaining Elms’ Sh50,000 personal bond.
Elms, a British national who has practiced law in Kenya for years, faces five counts arising from an allegedly forged will dated March 24, 1997, belonging to the late businessman Roger Bryan Robson. The charges include making a false document, uttering it to a police officer, and attempting to use the will to demand property in Nairobi’s Karen area worth Sh100 million.
Earlier, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) had sought to withdraw the case, arguing that there were no sufficient grounds to justify continuing with the trial and that pressing ahead would amount to an abuse of the court process.
Elms’ defense supported the withdrawal application, maintaining that the will’s validity had already been the subject of litigation in earlier succession proceedings. They insisted that Elms acted only as executor of the will and was not a beneficiary.
However, the complainants, through lawyer Wandugi Karathe, strongly opposed the withdrawal, insisting that the alleged forgery was a distinct criminal issue that deserved a full hearing.
The matter will now return to court on October 7 for plea taking.
