THE HIGH COURT FREEZES KENYA PIPELINE COMPANY ACCOUNTS OVER 500 MILLION DEBT

Kenya Pipeline Company suffered a blow after the High Court froze it's bank accounts, over a disputed 500m debt with the construction firm Zakhem international limited. This comes after the firm’s lawyer, Ahmednasir Abdullahi, filed another claim—this time targeting Equity Bank, Stanbic Bank, Kenya Commercial Bank, NCBA Bank, Citibank, Co-operative Bank, and Absa.
The firm asked the court to order a freeze of all the accounts to force the bank to pay up the money claimed. KPC, in its reply, argued that the demands are illegal since the firm was paid in full after an agreement that all the cases before the court would be withdrawn.
Mr Ahmednasir explained that Justice Grace Nzioka had awarded his client $44 million (Sh5.6 billion at the current exchange rate) in 2020 and directed them to reconcile their accounts. He said KRA followed the judgment by demanding Sh5.1 billion in tax.
According to the lawyer, Sh1.1 billion had been attached by KRA and retained by KPC. He said KPC ended up paying KRA Sh3.09 billion on 22 October 2020 and an additional Sh915 million on 8 January 2021, which was money owed to his client.
He asserted that from the computation, there was some $7.1 million (Sh926 million) that the corporation did not pay. The lawyer explained that on 6 January 2021, Justice Ngenye Macharia directed that Sh485 million be released to Zakhem and paid in US dollars.