Former Zoo Kericho players take club owner to court over match-fixing claims
The woes bedeviling Zoo and its owner Ken Ochieng’ are far from over after a Magistrate Court Friday issued an injunction against the football administrator and his proxies from spreading malicious information via social media of match-fixing against his two former players.
Tusker defender Isaac Kipyegon and former Nairobi City Stars Mike Madoya have filed a case claiming Ochieng’ and his proxies have been soiling their names by claiming that they fixed matches while playing for Zoo.
While Madoya filed an application via Davis Otwal and Manwa Advocates on July 15, his former team mate Kipyegon also filed through the same law company on July 25.
Senior Magistrate Hon S.A OPande PM certified the cases as urgent and ordered that Ochieng’ and his proxies cease to post anything on the duo and pull down and delete all the information that maliciously targeted the two players which has been posted in the past.
“An interim order be and is hereby issued by way of injunction, restraining the Defendant/Respondent whether acting by himself, his servants, agents, employees or any person whatsoever from posting, writing, printing, publishing, circulating, disseminating or causing to be written, published, circulated, disseminated in any manner whatsoever the defamatory statements that the Plaintiff/Applicant complains of herein or any other defamatory statements, words, material, testimony or remarks concerning the Plaintiff/Applicant in relation to his alleged involvement in all types of actions of match fixing,” read part of the order in both cases by Hon S.A. Opande PM.
The court ordered that Ochieng be served by the applicants and gave him 14 days to respond to their affidavit. The court hast set August 24 as the hearing date.
The grounds for the case was an audio posted on June 5 on Ochieng’s Facebook account regarding conversation between Zoo FC goalkeeper, Vincent Misikhu Ngaira and the goalkeeper coach Willis Ochieng Oganyo. Both Kipyegon and Madoyo were depicted as having engaged in match-fixing in the audio.
Kipyegon left Zoo Kericho in October 2018 and joined AFC Leopards while Madoya left in 2017 to join Tusker after winning the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award.
Zoo are currently serving a Fifa ban and have been relegated to the FKF Division One.
The club was on July 6 this year fined Sh6 million for failing to comply in full with the decision rendered by the FIFA Disciplinary Committee on April 23, 2021 which relegated them to FKF Division One but they ended up featuring in the National Super League.