More than Sh1.3 billion worth of deposits remains unclaimed in Dubai Bank three months after it collapsed, raising fears that most account holders may have been using the lender to run illegal activities. Central Bank of Kenya yesterday said only 561 out of 7743 depositors of the collapsed lender had come forward to claim their cash, and had collectively been paid Sh37 million. The huge bulk of faceless account holders is now worrying authorities over the possibly links to money laundering and worse, terror financing. CBK Governor Patrick Njoroge told Senators yesterday that it was disturbing that the account holders had not been identified, and is now opting to involve the police in identifying them. “I think something else is going on there (in Dubai Bank),” Dr Njoroge said, adding that it was not normal for legitimate depositors to take so long to identify themselves. Dubai Bank sank with about Sh1.35 billion in customer deposits and is currently under liquidation.

What If this is the money public servants steal from the citizens. Would you go and claim yourself if you were the owner.

Six individuals and their companies were behind last year’s sudden collapse of Dubai Bank, an auditing firm that inspected the lender’s books in the past decade has revealed. Crowe Horwath, through its local partners Horwath Erustus and Company, told Parliament that Dubai Bank collapsed under the weight of a Sh4 billion loan book, out of which Sh2.5 billion was non-performing, at the end of December 2014. Celphas Osoro, the external auditor in charge of Dubai bank at the time of its collapse in August last year, told the National Assembly’s Finance, Planning and Trade Committee that Sh1.9 billion of the non-performing loans had been disbursed to 10 companies, some of which had common shareholding. “If you are to lift the corporate veil, you will find that five or six persons had been lent Sh1.9 billion that were non-performing. This represented 76 per cent of the non-performing loans,” Mr Osoro told the committee chaired by Ainamoi MP Benjamin Lang’at. A search at the Registrar of Companies revealed that Dubai Bank’s heavy borrowers’ list is made up of politically connected businessmen such as former Nakuru stalwart Geoffrey Asanyo, Cyrus Jirongo and Benson Ndeta. The committee is investigating the circumstances that led to the collapse of Dubai Bank and two other lenders, Imperial and Chase banks, in a span of nine months. Mr Osoro told MPs that most of the individuals behind the six companies at Dubai Bank “were politically exposed persons, one of whom had loans amounting to Sh890 million or 88 per cent of lenders core capital”. The list of “politically exposed persons” and companies with non-performing loans at Dubai Bank includes Zap Group (Sh889 million), Kwanza Estates (Sh412 million), Sololo Outlets (Sh103.2 million), Kuza Farms and Allied (Sh249 million) and Torino Enterprises Limited (Sh138.9 million). The auditors also revealed that Dubai Bank’s collapse was caused by several other factors, including insider lending, disbursement of unsecured loans, inadequate working capital and lack of an internal audit unit and a chief finance officer.