Charterhouse Bank MD Sanjay Shah sues Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission
What you need to know:
- Mr Shah says he has been seeking an interim report allegedly prepared by the EACC on the findings of the investigations.
- Mr Ngatia told the court that he was also seeking to compel the EACC to release customers’ account documents they took from the bank.
Charterhouse Bank managing director Sanjay Shah has gone to court to compel the anti-corruption agency to produce a report over his alleged involvement in corruption so that he can appeal a decision by Britain to deny him a visa.
Mr Shah wants to undergo surgery at a hospital in Britain.
He urged the court to instruct the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) to provide him with a report linking him to corruption between 2004 and 2006 that he believes is the genesis of the travel ban slapped against him by Britain.
He says that in 2006, the anti-graft agency raided the bank’s offices at Longonot Place on allegations that the bank was involved in massive money laundering, tax evasion and economic crimes and carried away depositors and creditors’ account documents which, to this day, have not been returned.
Through his lawyer Mark Ngatia, Mr Shah says he has been seeking an interim report allegedly prepared by the EACC on the findings of the investigations carried out on the accounts but the report has not been given to him.
“Two weeks after the raid by EACC, Central Bank also did an impromptu investigation and identified that certain documents were missing. The documents were part of what the anti-graft agency carried away,” he said.
He claimed that the move by the anti-corruption agency to deny him findings of the report had placed him in an awkward situation.
MONEY LAUNDERING
“My client’s visa denial is on account of his alleged involvement in money laundering, economic crimes and corruption as the MD of Charterhouse Bank. Now he needs to access urgent medical care in the UK but he cannot,” Mr Ngatia said.
The lawyer said that after learning of the EACC report in 2013, he was instructed to write a letter to the agency head seeking clarifications on his alleged involvement in illegal money dealings.
He claimed that he wrote reminders to the anti-graft agency but his letters have to date not been responded to.
“The matter has been lying in abeyance since 2006. There was collusion between some members of Charterhouse Bank and the anti-graft agency to try to fix him over allegations of suspicious activities within the bank,” the lawyer said.
Mr Ngatia told the court that he was not only seeking to be furnished with the findings of the report but also to compel the EACC to release customers’ account documents they took from the bank.
“There is no evidence of investigations being carried out by EACC; they just confiscated documents from our offices in 2004 and did not return some,” he said.
Attorney-General Amos Wako was in 2010 accused by the parliamentary committee on Finance, Trade and Planning of sitting on fraud charges against directors of Charterhouse Bank.
The then chairman of the committee, Mr Chris Okemo, asked whether it was normal for the AG’s office to hold a charge in abeyance for over two years.
