Companies

Directors want their Sh1.6bn Chase Bank case quashed

chase

Customers at a Chase Bank branch. FILE PHOTO | NMG

Two directors of a company accused of conspiring to defraud the collapsed Chase Bank over Sh1.6 billion and stealing $588,000 (currently Sh60.5 million) have denied the charges terming them as “fatally defective”.

Mr Mohammed Nasrullah Khan and his wife, Amira Claudia Khan, have urged senior principal magistrate Ms Martha Mutuku to quash the criminal charges filed against them by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Keriako Tobiko.

Defence lawyers Cecil Miller and Peter Wena told Ms Mutuku that the couple who are directors of Golden Azure Investments Limited were advanced a loan of $588,000 by the collapsed bank in 2012 to purchase some property at the Coast in 2012.

“A loan of $588,000 was disbursed by Chase Bank Ltd through the suspects company Golden Azure Investments Limited on January 7, 2015,” Mr Miller told the court.

READ: Sh1bn Chase Bank fraud suspects in court bid to stop trial

The magistrate heard that Mr Khan is a brother of the former chairman of the bank, Mohammed Zafrullan Khan, who has been charged alongside Duncan Kabui Gichu, James Mwaura Mwenja, Makarios Omondi Agumbi, Abdul Ahmed Samji, Harish Shah, Amira and Nasrullah.

Nasrullah and his wife Amira, who are yet to plead to the five counts against them, said there is an ulterior motive in charging them as they are relatives of the chairman of the collapsed bank.