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Tuesday, October 30, 2012

PETER WAHINYA: AIRTEL FREEZES ACCOUNTS OVER EQUITY BANK LOST FUNDS


The Airtel notice.


Airtel has been running a public notice featuring a Peter Wahinya in the Daily Nation for the last two months, cautioning the public not to deal with him on any Airtel issues.

It is enough to raise anyone's curiosity: what would impel Airtel to spend millions to put a guy's face in the papers?

Indeed, as they are asking at Wazua, how much money did Wahinya take from the company?

THE LOWDOWN

It can be confirmed that indeed, it is a case of money lost from the company.

It turns out, according to sources, that Wahinya, is accused of stealing millions from the company through its Equity Bank account by first transferring the funds from the account into other unsuspecting people's accounts before the money was routed to Wahinya's account.

Some conservative estimates place the money so embezzled at Sh26million.

It so happened that a customer, having notice the coming in and going out of unusually large amounts of funds in his account, raised the alarm.

He demanded to know where that money comes from before it goes out of his account as he did not recognize the transactions.

It is then that the trail was followed and the pictured gentleman's gig was up.

FROZEN ASSETS

As of now, as Wahinya tussles with his former employer, reportedly most of his assets have been frozen. His bank accounts have been frozen.

He is said to have grown a fleet of trucks that plied the Mombasa route -those have also been frozen.

He was also said to have built a few flats - those have also been seized.

It is not clear how the fellow, said to be in his late 20s, managed to pull of such a heist but from all appearances, it must have been done in complicity with a bank employee.

AIRTEL

As for Airtel, there is little incentive to warn the public of Wahinya's existence but according to sources, top brass at the mobile operator have decided to shame him relentlessly by booking the ads basically murder his character beyond salvation.

Meanwhile, expect the battle to take several fronts to court -- from Law Courts in the CBD for criminal related issues, to Milimani where, the Commercial Division of the High Court of Kenya, sits.