National Bank of Kenya confirms exit of suspended CEO Munir Ahmed, two other senior officials

National Bank of Kenya has given marching orders to former chief executive Munir Ahmed and two other senior executives. Munir who has been on suspension since March 31 alongside five other senior managers was discharged in a letter authored on Thursday last week but published by the Nairobi Securities Exchange yesterday.
“...the Board of National Bank of Kenya Limited wishes to confirm that Mr Munir S Ahmed, formerly the Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of the bank has since left employment,” NBK Company Secretary Habil Waswani said.

The same fate befell two other executives, Boniface Biko – the former Executive Director in charge of Corporate Institutional and Business Banking, and Chris Kisire– previously the Chief Finance Officer. NBK did not disclose if the three other suspended officials would stay on, pending completion of the investigations into allegations of mismanagement.

All the six have already recorded statements with the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, following a Presidential directive demanding a probe into their management of the bank and possible prosecution.

NBK reported a shock loss of Sh1.15 billion in its financial results published on March 31, with Mr Munir attributing the poor performance to tightened reporting requirements by both the Central Bank of Kenya and the external auditors, Deloitte & Touche. Fears that the bank had been falsifying its financial position during the year were rife, specifically so because NBK has reported a pretax profit of Sh2.3 billion for the nine months to September.
How the eventual accounts were compiled was the subject of a behind-the-scenes struggle pitting the management against the auditors, according to the correspondence that Mr Munir submitted to the DCI.

In one letter he sent to the chairman Mohamed Hassan, the sacked chief executive even warned that the impending dismissal was defamatory and of ‘reputational damage’.
“What I obviously cannot be expected to accept is the soiling of my name and professional standing in the manner in which the Board is inclined to exit me,” Mr Munir, previously the Regional Head of Compliance at StanChart Bank, cautioned.

The confidential letter is dated March 31, 2016, the regulatory deadline for commercial banks to file their financial reports. “I wish to draw the attention of the Board that there are 16 months remaining of my current contract of 5 years,” further reads Munir’s letter, in a warning that could imply he would at least be expecting some compensation for the premature termination of employment.

He was responding to a show cause notice issued just two days before, following a major reclassification of the lender’s debts that resulted in a Sh1.15 billion in after tax losses.

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