Fraud case bank bosses seek bail

Two senior bank managers will appear in court on Wednesday in connection with their application to be freed on bail after spending two days in police custody.

Ecobank’s managing director in Uganda Michael Monari and senior group officer in Togo Wilfred Oroko were remanded at Muthaiga Police Station on Monday after a court declined their request to be released on bail.

They were charged with wilfully procuring for Akiba Bank the registration of land by replacing the title deed without the consent of the owner, Mr Abubakar Mohamed Habib. They both denied the charge.

Conclude investigations

Mr Monari is a former Ecobank-Kenya chief executive officer while Mr Oroko was the bank’s secretary before he was seconded to the bank’s head office in Togo.

They allegedly committed the offence on December 31, 2008, at the Ministry of Lands headquarters in Nairobi.

Their request to be released on bail was rejected after prosecutor Onesmus Towet asked the court to allow police officers to detain them for two days to conclude investigations.

Mr Towet said the two had just arrived from their stations outside the country and police had not been able to interrogate them fully.

He said the accused had been uncooperative ever since they recorded statements last year when investigations begun.

The two had asked senior principal magistrate Lucy Nyambura to release them on bail as they were Kenyan citizens and were ready to attend court proceedings whenever they were asked to so.

They opposed the request to detain them for further investigations, arguing that the police had adequate time to complete their findings since they started looking into the case in June 2011.

They said they were senior employees of Ecobank, which is a multi-national company, and the charge facing them could not be reason for them to flee the country if released on bail.

Ms Nyambura, however, ruled that although the law allowed the accused to be released on bail, the two had not provided evidence to show why they did not travel back earlier to give police time to complete investigations.

She ruled that given the history of the case, the prosecution was not asking for too much to detain the accused for two days to complete investigations.

The magistrate directed that Mr Monari and Mr Oroko be detained at Muthaiga Police Station until Wednesday. Ms Nyambura last month issued summons for the two to appear in court after lifting a warrant of arrest, which had been issued against them in April.

Investigating officers had claimed the two bankers fled the country to avoid arrest and enlisted the support of Interpol to track them down.

The magistrate, however, argued that they could not be said to have fled the country since it had been proven they were engaged in genuine employment in foreign countries.

According to the prosecution, Mr Monari and Mr Oroko allegedly registered the charge on the multi-million-shilling land along Mokhtar Dadar Street, Nairobi, without the consent of the owner Habib, who has since died.

Mr Habib’s son, Mohamed Abubakar, claims his father borrowed Sh7.5 million from Ecobank which he repaid fully before he died.