A former receiver manager of Imperial Bank Ltd on Tuesday told a Nairobi court that senior officials of the collapsed lender colluded to cover up fraud.
Mr Mohamud Mohamud told Milimani senior resident magistrate that senior managers tried cooking books, and had a parallel record of accounts, among other irregularities to hide the fraud.
The former Kenya Deposit Insurance CEO further said there was fraudulent disbursement of Sh20 billion to three companies, among them, W.E. Tilley, whose directors are facing charges in court.
“There were withdrawals of large funds, some of which were paid to W.E. Tilley,” he said, adding that the information was contained in a whistleblower report and a forensic report conducted by a UK firm.
The court heard that the former bank officials had a hidden parallel book of accounts and the financial statements presented to the directors were always understated and did not reflect the true statement of accounts.
Mr Mohamud was testifying in a case involving five top managers among them Naeem Ahmed Shah (former MD) and his deputy James Kaburu together with W. E. Tilley directors —Nashir Haiderali Jessa, Zulfikar Haiderali Jessa, Ms Nargis Aziz Jessa, and W E Tilley (Muthaiga) Ltd, have been accused of conspiring to defraud the bank through criminal schemes and false accounting.
The charges against them state that they conspired to defraud the bank, now in receivership, and its depositors of approximately Sh29 billion through an irregular and illegal overdraft disbursement scheme.
The charges state that the offence took place between January 1, 2006, and September 15, 2015.
Defence lawyers Ahmednasir Abdullahi and Gitau Singh, however, objected to the prosecution going into details of how the fraud was perpetrated, saying he was not the one who generated the report.
