A Nairobi court yesterday issued a warrant of arrest against two former senior managers of Chase Bank. They failed to appear in court to plead to the charges of conspiring to defraud the bank of over Sh1.6 billion.
Milimani senior principal magistrate Martha Mutuku issued the arrest order for Abdul Ahmed and Ghanrish Omar. They two did not comply with earlier summons requiring them to attend court yesterday to take plea in the fraud case. At the same time, two other Chase Bank managers Amiran Claudia and Mohammed Khan, through their lawyer Cecil Miller, made an application opposing the taking of plea in the same case. They said that the charges against them are defective. The Director of Public Prosecutions through senior state counsel James Warui asked the court for more time to respond to the defence’s application. The magistrate however, ordered the application to be heard on September 7. The four are jointly charged alongside former Chase Bank chairman Mohamed Zafrullah.
The other three accused are former senior managers Duncan Gichui, former group managing director, James Mwenja general manager credit and Makaros Agumbi. They have since denied committing fraud and are out on a Sh2 million cash bail each. The prosecution said between August 28, 2009 and March 31, 2016 they conspired with intent to defraud Chase Bank Limited. They pretended that the disbursement of Sh1.6 billion they effected from the internal account of the bank to the accounts of Camelia Investments Limited, Cleopatra Holdings Limited, Golden Azure Limited and Colbrook Holding Limited were genuine loan facilities to the entities and were disbursed in the ordinary process of loan process flow Chase Bank collapsed in April 2016 and has since been under the control of Central Bank of Kenya. An incriminating anonymous letter sent by a whistle-blower to international investors of Chase Bank in February led to the shock closure of the institution. It emerged that the leaked document pointed to anomalies in the institution’s financial books, including at least Sh16.6 billion irregularly advanced to individuals.
