Lawyer wants AG Githu Muigai grilled over Sh49m KBC suit

 

The multi-billion shilling dispute between the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) and a Dubai-based businessman over a failed TV channel has thickened after a city lawyer sought Parliament’s intervention.

Lawyer Apollo Mboya has petitioned the National Assembly, seeking summonses on Attorney General Githu Muigai to brief the House on the “practical steps” he is taking to defend a Sh49 billion claim against KBC by Channel 2 Group at London Court of International Arbitration.

The businessman — Ajay Sethi of Channel 2 Group — is contesting KBC’s unilateral termination of Metro TV, their joint venture on a 24-hour entertainment and sports channel in 2009. He is also contesting KBC’s subsequent digital distribution partnership with China’s Startimes, saying it was contrived.

Channel 2 Group Corporation was a joint venture between Sethi and KBC management, which began in 2006 and was to end to 2017. They were to share revenue at the ration of 70:30 in favour of KBC. Three years later, KBC terminated the venture citing “poor financial performance”.

Mboya says there is imminent danger from the pleadings in the arbitration and circumstances of the case that KBC will lose out and Kenyan assets abroad will be attached. He also informs Parliament that the award by the London court cannot be appealed.

“It appears that the termination of the contractual arrangements between Channel 2 Group Corporation and KBC, which resulted in the present arbitration, was deliberately engineered by high-ranking government officials and their business associates in a web of corruption so as to grant Startimes/Pan African Network Group of China exclusive digital broadcasting rights to the detriment of indigenous Kenyan broadcasters, the general public and National Treasury,” the petition reads.

In the petition, Mboya attached 16 documents that have been tabled at the arbitration process, including a witness statement of former KBC Company Secretary Hezron Oira supporting the businessman’s case. He also attached witness statements of four other Kenyans supporting the businessman against the public broadcaster.

The four include media operative George Lutta, a technical services manager at KBC at the time, Thomas Onduso, Francis Kimore and Robert Kung’u.

Mboya wants Muigai to brief Parliament on the merits of the defence by KBC, the likelihood of success of such defence, the current status of the arbitration process, projected costs of a protracted arbitration and balance of convenience between a negotiated settlement and an adverse arbitral award.

“Your humble petitioner prays that Parliament inquire into the process that led to the grant of exclusive digital broadcasting licence to Startimes/Pan African Network Group of China and to consider whether or not this exclusive arrangement has been beneficial to the Treasury.”