Trader sues Gulf Africa bank for loss of title over Sh58m loan

When Gulf African Bank signed an MoU with the Kenya National Chamber of Commerce on capacity building for youth and women professionals and entrepreneurs in the SME sector. [File, Standard]

A businessman has accused a bank of causing the loss of his land title so as to charge him more interest over a Sh58 million loan.

Hashim Mohammed accused Gulf Africa Bank Limited of denying him a chance to sell his property while taking advantage of the situation to demand millions of shillings as interest.

"The bank caused my land title to disappear so as to frustrate my efforts to sell the property and repay them their amount. As a result of their tricks, they levied me an additional Sh4 million on top of the principal loan amount which I had repaid," said Mohammed.

Through lawyer Hassan Ndege, the businessman told the court that he took a loan from Gulf Africa Bank in 2010 and secured it with his two land titles located in South B, Nairobi county.

He argued that in 2013, he received an offer from a company that was ready to purchase the land at a cost of Sh65 million. He intended to use the money to settle the bank loan which, at the time, was Sh58 million, and remain with a profit of Sh7 million. However, when he approached the bank to release the title so as to conclude the sale transaction and settle the outstanding loan balance, the bank informed him that the land titles got lost.

"They told him that his titles were all lost while in the bank's custody and gave a false promise that they will not levy profit and penalty charges only to realise that the bank had taken advantage to levy interest charges at 21 per cent," said Ndege.

According to the lawyer, the bank owed the businessman duty of care to ensure his land titles were safe.

He submitted that since the businessman was frustrated by the Gulf Bank's refusal to discharge his title, he approached National Bank which agreed to buy off the loan to save on the high-interest rates but his efforts were again frustrated by the lost title.

Mohammed said he waited for another two years before Gulf Bank processed another title. But the bank denied the claims arguing that the businessman is lying.

He added that the bank did not intentionally cause the loss of Mohammed's land title.