After winning medals for the country, multiple world champion in 5,000m and 10,000m Vivian Cheruiyot now wants the government to protect her wealth from attempts to dispossess her.
In her cry for help, the athlete says she fears her husband Moses Kiplagat, in cahoots with some members of his family, his estranged wife and a friend are hell-bent on impoverishing and her children.
“I am asking the government to help me. I want my property to be safe for the future of my children. I want all documents kept safely in a bank,” she says.
Cheruiyot claims that on top of the loss of income from the investments she made from winning several well-oiled races across the globe, she has faced physical and psychological abuses from her husband. Strangely, they still live together at their house in Ilula on the outskirts of Eldoret.
“My husband is playing some games with my properties. My husband has taken firm control of my two petrol stations (Oslo Petrol Stations) and proceeds from agricultural land, and I can’t earn from them. I don’t even where the title deeds are.
“I am willing to share the property with my husband, but it has reached a point where I should speak up. I have persistently asked him that we have joint ownership of my properties but he refused. He has used proceeds from businesses to open branches, which he collects and never shares,” Cheruiyot told the Nairobian in an exclusive interview.
Sometime in 2021, Cheruiyot says, she was shocked when she was asked to get approval from her husband before being given Sh2,000 from rent collected from her residential houses in Kapsoya. She reclaimed managed of the residential building in Kapsoya after the embarrassment, she says.
“There was a time he beat me up before my son Allan after I asked him to take the children from the previous marriage to their mother (Caroline Kwambai), and that attack disturbs my son,” Cheruiyot adds, further claiming that a former athlete Abraham Chelanga was wrecking her marriage by leaking information to Caroline, her husband’s estranged wife. The three children she wants out of her matrimonial home are aged 26, 24 and 18.
Kiplagat and Chelanga denied offending Cheruiyot and says she was struggling with undisclosed social challenges.
Cheruiyot says Kiplagat built their current residence in Ilula, at Sh70 million, when she (Cheruiyot) was out of the country. She suspects she took part of their money in the process, but Kiplagat says, he used his money to build the home.
She says is currently not in the right mental state to train due to family problems.