Businessman wants Safaricom compelled to avail MPESA statement and till number for Mombasa County courts

Mombasa businessman Patrick Kabundu at the Mombasa High Court. [Kelvin Karani/Standard]

A businessman wants the Mombasa High Court to issue orders compelling Safaricom to produce M-Pesa statements of an account used to deposit fines and cash bails imposed by the county court.

Patrick Kabundu told Justice Eric Ogola that the Mombasa county government was stealing money meant for the Judiciary by running an "unconstitutional and illegal' court.

Kabundu said that after he was arrested and charged in a county court, he proceeded to pay a cash bail of Sh75 through M-Pesa. The pay bill, he said, indicated an account called "General One" instead of the official KCB account.

But Justice Ogola demanded to know how Mr Kabundu would enforce the orders because the mobile service provider was not party to the lawsuit.

"I want to understand how you will effect the order to Safaricom. I issue orders to parties before the court," he said.

Last year, the judge declined to order that the county court be closed. He ruled that there was insufficient evidence that the county was not remitting fines and cash bails to the KCB account.

The Attorney General, Director of Public Prosecutions and the Law Society of Kenya, who were interested parties, had agreed with Kabundu that the county court should be scrapped because it was operating illegally and had no mandate to prosecute cases.