BY SAM ALFAN.
Imperial Bank owners have hit back at the Central Bank of Kenya accusing it of forging inspection reports and other crucial documents that were relied upon to place it under receivership.
The shareholders say CBK officials were aided by some top Imperial Bank managers.
The Non-Executive Directors and the Shareholders claim that the move was to make the Board entirely unaware of the fraud and the true position of the Bank’s balance sheet.
In an affidavit by one of the Bank’s Non- Executive Directors, Anwar Hajee, the shareholders state that deposits that were made by the Bank’s customers were fraudlently transferred to various accounts under the name of W.E Tilley(Muthaiga) Limited.
“The disbursements were effected on the instructions of the Bank’s deceased former Group Managing Director Abdulmalek Janmohammed with the assistance of other senior officials of the Bank and their associates,” claimed Hajee in court documents.
The Shareholders and the Directors further claim that the monies would be withdrawn or transferred for the benefit of those concerned and that CBK officials were aware of and facilitated the concealment of the aforesaid fraudulent conduct.
It is their evidence that CBK colluded with the former Managing Director and other senior officials amongst others including James Kaburu and Naeem Shaah by providing the board with entirely false financial data together with regulatory reports which were doctored.
“The improper relationships appear to have been those between Mr Kaburu the Chief Finance Officer and latterly Deputy Managing Directors at IBL and Mr Gatere and Mr Cheres from CBK.
They were all intimately involved in the inspection process as well as the general day to day running and regulations of the Bank,” claimed Hajee.
The shareholders say that CBK over the course of the year and unknown to the Bank’s Board deliberately flouted, breached or otherwise acted in disregard of the law in relation to the supervisory processes.
“A reasonable regulator in the shoes of the CBK should have brought to light the wrong doing at the highest level of IBL’s management. CBK did not do this,” they said.
The shareholders have established that year after year, CBK officials established a pattern of changing content of those final reports in order to ensure that loans approved by the Board did not appear in CBK’S Inspection Reports.
“The directors believed and had no reason to doubt that the Bank’s executive team and CBK had a professional and above board relationship,” said Hajee
