A court has issued an freezing order seeking to bar a woman from accessing Kshs 115 million in her bank account after reports that it could be have been obtained from money laundering.

The Asset Recovery Agency moved to court to obtain the order freezing the bank account belonging to Isabel Wanjohi after suspicions that she intended to travel to transfer the lump-sum amount to South Africa without declaring its source.

“We suspect that Wanjohi who works at Platinum Credit Limited is being used by fraudsters as a conduit for money laundering in which they use her account to deposit cash in dollars and hurriedly transfer the money to other accounts in South Africa,”  ARA lawyer Jennifer Gitiri told the court.

This was after intelligence reports revealed that she was engaged in money laundering, and after a probe was conducted, it emerged that her account at Standard Chartered Bank received the suspicious amount deposited on a single day.

According to an affidavit sworn by the agency's investigator Saute Matipei, when asked about the source of the money after it was deposited on April 13, Wanjohi stated she had obtained a loan from another microfinance institution.

“She told investigators that the amount was an unsecured loan she took from Platcorps Holdings Limited but she did not explain the purpose for the loan which made us believe they are proceeds of organised crime and money laundering,” swore Matipei.

The ARA established that indeed Platcorps Holdings Limited was a micro finance lender, but it has no capacity to lend such an amount to an individual without security for the funds.

Further ,Wanjohi produced a loan agreement between herself and the lender shrouded with discrepancies,  with no signatures and also lacked witnesses which was highly suspicious given the amount of money in question.

The ARA pointed out Wanjohi is also an employee of a micro-finance institution which would have made it easier for her to work in cahoots with people who launder money from unknown sources and use her accounts to conceal their tracks.

This therefore compelled High Court Judge Esther Main to issue the freezing order , as she rules that the transfer of the amount to South Africa posed quite the risk if the money fell into the wrong hands.

“The total amount of $1 million (Sh115 million) should be immediately transferred to the Asset Recovery Agency accounts and be preserved until determination of the suit,” she ruled.