Over Two Thousand (2,000) Nigerian investors in Kenya have made a petition against the court to unfreeze the Eleven Million Eight Hundred Thousand ($11.8 million) US dollars that the court had ordered to be frozen. The amount in question is equivalent to one billion four hundred forty million Kenyan Shillings (Ksh1.44 billion).
The investors claim that the monies are locked in separate accounts including Safaricom, GT bank and two other banks, which were swindled off them in a financial transaction that has the involvement of Flutterwave, an African-focused Payment platform.
The petitioners in the petition claimed that they were defrauded to the tune of billions of Kenyan shilling via sports betting medium which used flutter wave as its payment processing platform.
According to reports, as a result of the alleged event, the Two thousand Four hundred and Sixty-Eight (2,468) petitioners want the frozen cash of $11.8 million split from the frozen $54.5 million back in July 2022.
The funds in question are being held in Sixty-two (62) bank accounts Equity Bank, Ecobank, Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) and United Bank Of Africa (UBA), included in the case are about Nineteen (19) Safaricom pay bill digits which are under the Kenyan anti-money laundering laws.
At the early stage of the case in July, The Assets Recovery Agency had secured a court order to freeze about Twenty-Nine(29)accounts from different banks that held the sum of Ksh5.17 billion and also some other money in hard currencies.
It has been alleged that the funds in the frozen account were from illegal activities.
One of the petitioners and an investor, Morris Ebitimi Joseph explained that he and the other victims of the alleged swindle case have put in the case in their country, Nigeria, where they are seeking to get their monies back. Through this action, they are against the forfeiture of the money to the Kenyan government, as they claim part of it belongs to them.
Morris stated, “I believe that the issuance of an order compelling Guaranty Trust Bank, Equity Bank and Ecobank to deposit the sums excluded in the bank account of our advocates, justice shall be served to the 2,468 interested parties who were swindled of their hard-earned money through the scheme.”
