Teenage billionaire: SK Macharia’s grandson…could be Kenya’s richest 19 year old!

Adam Macharia given daddy’s Sh382 million life insurance and pension…and Sh900 million family fortune is also up for grabs

**In other news:** Media mogul SK Macharia’s domestic problems including death of his son, court battle with his grandson, bad blood with his daughter in-law, marital woes with his first estranged wife and current second wife and her sons, are part litany of problems the tycoon has been battling since a curse was unleashed on him in 2017. To reverse it, he held a cleansing ritual ceremony in April this year when another bunch of elders sacrificed a sheep, but whether it will work is another matter.

By Mbatia wa Njambi

Contributing Editor/Visiting Thinker

At only 19 years, media mogul SK Macharia’s grandson could become a certified billionaire in real coin. SK was last year sued by his grandson, Adam Kamau Macharia, after the tycoon took control of his inheritance valued at Sh1.2 billion.

It so happened that Adam’s dad, John Gichia Macharia-Kenya’s largest insurer of passenger service vehicles, died in a greasily road accident three years ago. Gichia, SK’s eldest son from his first, estranged wife, Serah Njeri Macharia, had named Adam as the beneficiary of his Sh315 million in life insurance and Sh67 million pension.

That dough, Sh382 million in total, was paid to Directline Assurance- where Gichia cusped a 70 percent controlling stake.

**Delayed broadcast:** Lisa Anyango Amenya (above), is the wife of SK Macharia’s late son, John Gichia. SK told the court that she was never officially married and was to be excluded from the inheritance dispute considering that Adam “was born out of wedlock and that she has no known interest in the estate under the law of Succession.”

But there was a problem. Adam was 16, a minor. Despite minority shareholding in Directline, SK stepped in to control its operations and by extension, the Sh382 million- on Adam’s behalf.

After all, Adam’s mum, former Kiss FM radio presenter, Lisa Anyango Amenya, was not ‘properly married’ to Gichia.

Being a minor, Adam could not sue his grandpa on behalf of his mother who was listed as a director in AKM Investments. AKM stands for Adam Kamau Macharia. Gichia was the sole shareholder in AKM which owned four high end houses in Nairobi’s Kyuna estate and in Nanyuki.

**Traffic update:** SK Macharia’s son loved fast cars like the Porsche Cayenne which rammed into a lorry killing him in 2018. He had no written will by the time of his death that night along the Eastern Bypass in Nairobi.

Gichia, who died without a will, also had shares in private companies with interests in media production and distribution, finance, conservation and property development.

Lisa, as well as Gichia’s siblings, Stella and David Macharia were listed as the other directors of AKM.

This state of affairs created so much bad blood SK Macharia demanded that Lisa and Adam vacate the house owned by Gichia in Kyuna Estate and which mother and son had all along lived in.

**Let’s take a breather:** John Gichia Macharia, the late son of media mogul SK Macharia left Sh382 million to his only child, Adam Kamau. Gichia was the largest shareholder of Directline, Kenya’s largest insurer of PSVs. Besides Directline, Gichia was the sole owner of AKM Investments under whose assets includes four houses—one in Kyuna Crescent, Mugumo Crescent, Kibarage Estate and Nanyuki.

In a strange arrangement, Gichia also lived in a different house within Kyuna, but had moved to another of his houses in Loresho before he rammed his Porsche Cayenne into a stationary lorry along the Eastern Bypass leading to his death in 2018.

So nasty was SK Macharia’s beef with Lisa he also demanded that she return eight vehicles including two Range Rovers, two Land Rovers, a BMW, Jaguar, Jeep and Porsche 911. The Porsche and Land Rover Discovery are registered under her name.

**Over to you in the studio:** Kiarie wa Rugami (above), the chair of Kiama Kia Ma (Council of the Truth), a splinter group of the Kikuyu Council of Elders which cursed SK Macharia for ‘disassociating himself from the community’. During the ritual, a goat was pierced with a horn while incantations were made cursing his business empire as well as his generations.
“We know any time calamities can strike him,” said Rugami adding that the entire sacrificial goat was burnt meaning “the curse is irreversible and nothing can be done to save him.”

As the years rolled by, Adam turned 19 and as an adult could sue his grandpa which he did arguing SK could now back off as he was no longer a minor.

High Court judge Stella Mutuku agreed with Adam and revoked the letters of administration granted to SK two years ago. The victory of Adam Macharia means mother and son can rest easy before SK Macharia, a veteran of the courts, fights the temporary loss of his late son’s Sh1.2 billion estate.