National Bank Managing Director Ahmed Munir. Leonard Kamweti lost his cool demanding permission to privately prosecute National Bank chair Mohammed Hassan and MD Munir Ahmed for firing him after allegedly pressuring him to drop a complaint he had lodged with the Law Society of Kenya against a third party. Photo/FILE
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Leonard Kamweti lost his cool demanding permission to privately prosecute National Bank chair Mohammed Hassan and MD Munir Ahmed for firing him after allegedly pressuring him to drop a complaint he had lodged with the Law Society of Kenya against a third party.
Tempers flared in a Nairobi courtroom Wednesday as a lawyer accused police and State prosecutors of conspiring to block the prosecution of two bank directors for “corruption” over the way he lost his job.
Mr Leonard Kamweti lost his cool demanding permission to privately prosecute National Bank directors Mohammed Hassan and Munir Ahmed for firing him after allegedly pressuring him to drop a complaint he had lodged with the Law Society of Kenya against a third party.
The complaint related to improper access by the third party to secret bank correspondence.
Mr Hassan is chairman of National Bank’s board while Mr Ahmed is the managing director.
Mr Kamweti claimed the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) and the police have been reluctant to pursue the matter despite his complaints over the past year. The DPP’s office, he said, had dismissed his case as “frivolous” and “an abuse of the court process” while the police allegedly wanted evidence destroyed.
The bank directors’ lawyers, Cecil Miller and George Oraro, raised a preliminary objection to the proceedings on the grounds that the court had no jurisdiction to entertain Mr Kamweti.
This sparked a raging legal argument that lasted half an hour before the presiding magistrate put it to rest ruling that the objection raised by Mr Miller and Mr Oraro takes precedence over the complainant’s case.
Mr Kamweti wanted the court to admit three charges he has drawn against the bank directors accusing them of conspiring to defeat and obstruct the justice, and “corruptly abusing their offices to confer a benefit to one Mr Abdullahi Maalim by compelling him (Mr Kamweti), while in their employment, to drop a separate complaint he had lodged against Mr Maalim at the LSK disciplinary committee.”
The complainant says after “improperly putting him under pressure to withdraw accusations that Mr Maalim had obtained confidential National Bank correspondence”, the directors then sacked him as NBK's company secretary.
His efforts to have the bankers summoned to court were thwarted by counterarguments that the preliminary objection against the intended prosecution be given first priority.
The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, which Mr Kamweti had enjoined in the suit as an interested party, withdrew on the grounds that it had “no prosecutorial powers”. A representative told the court that the DPP’s office was best placed to deal with the case.
However, the DPP has also raised a preliminary objection against the private prosecution.
Deputy DPP Victor Mule supported the argument that the objection be heard and settled first.
“There is a preliminary objection filed before this court and that means everything else is put on hold until it is dealt with,” magistrate Enock Cherono ruled. “Everything else must wait. The hearing of the preliminary objection will take precedence before Mr Kamweti is entertained.”
Mr Kamweti told the court the DPP and the police had “obstructed” him in five instances.
“They have been seeking to gag me by raising the objection that the prosecution is frivolous,” he said.
He also dismissed as misleading a claim by Mr Miller and Mr Oraro that he had not taken steps to pursue his case. “In fact, the police have told me to remove the term corruption from the charge sheet and scrap the digital evidence I have against the intended accused until I get their consent.”
