Nairobi, June 23 -- A Magistrate's Court has ordered the government to compensate businessman Sh15 million for crippling a pharmaceutical import venture by wrongly linking a shipment of multivitamin capsules to narcotics trafficking.

The court awarded Peter Maina Mugambi and his company, Kinetic Resources Limited, the damages after finding that State investigators and prosecutors lacked reasonable grounds to charge him over a consignment imported from China in 2018.

The ruling arose from the interception of a shipment initially suspected to contain the banned psychotropic drug methaqualone. The allegations later collapsed after laboratory tests failed to support the charges.

The dispute subsequently evolved into a civil case, with the ...