The Employment and Labour Relations Court in Nairobi has awarded a former sales manager at East African Breweries Plc (EABL) more than Sh10 million for unlawful and unfair dismissal.
The court said the giant brewer failed to follow due process when terminating Bernard Ng'eno's employment.
“Pursuant to the foregoing findings and conclusions, I award the Claimant 12 months’ salary in compensation. In making this award, I have considered the Claimant’s long service and the finding that he did not contribute to the dismissal. I have further considered the Respondent’s refusal to provide the Claimant an opportunity to see the investigation report and witness statements relied upon to make the decision to dismiss him,” Justice Linnet Ndolo said in her decision on July 24, 2025. The court awarded him Sh10,896,787.
Mr Ng’eno joined EABL in 2011 as a sales representative and rose through the ranks to become divisional sales manager. He was dismissed in November 2023 over allegations of fraud, gross negligence and misappropriation of company assets.
Aggrieved by the decision of the company, Mr Ng’eno sued EABL. He argued that he was subjected to a rushed and opaque disciplinary process.
He told court that the allegations against him, including the Isiolo Fest and Embu Sevens Activation marketing events, lacked a factual basis.
He added that he was not the sole approver of event proposals or marketing budgets, and that he relied on data already entered in the company's distributor management system by other departments.
Mr Ng’eno also added that he was denied access to the investigation report and witness statements that formed the basis of his dismissal, even after he made a formal request.
In its defence, EABL alleged that Mr Ng’eno had approved budgets for events that never took place or were grossly misrepresented. The company accused him of facilitating the siphoning of promotional stock worth millions of shillings and failing to exercise oversight expected of his senior role.
Justice Ndolo found that EABL failed to prove the allegations to the standard required by law.
The company also said that the former employee failed to report the loss of a company-issued mobile phone in time, denying the firm an opportunity to secure sensitive data and file an insurance claim.
The judge criticised the company for withholding critical documents, including the internal investigation report, from the claimant and ruled that this undermined the integrity of the disciplinary process.
Further, Justice Ndolo noted that the company obtained a letter from Kenyatta University after his dismissal alleging that Mr Ng’eno’s studies had been discontinued years earlier. The court dismissed this move as an act of malice, saying that the Human Resources Director failed to explain how the letter was acquired or its relevance to the dismissal.
“In the instant case, the claimant was denied the investigation report as well as witness statements that nailed him. In my view, this denial, under the pretext of unsubstantiated confidentiality considerations, was a gross violation of mandatory procedural fairness requirements; so gross that the entire disciplinary process was compromised. As a result, the respondent failed to establish valid reasons for dismissing the claimant,” the court said.
