•Wambui was on December 6, 2021, charged before the anti-corruption magistrate court with tax evasion amounting to Sh2.5 billion.
•She says the end game for KRA was to deny her funds for raising cash bail in her case.
Businesswoman Mary Wambui has accused Kenya Revenue Authority of malice, saying the tax collector wants to cripple her businesses by seeking to freeze her accounts on claims of tax evasion.
KRA has asked the Milimani Commercial Court to freeze 13 bank accounts linked to Wambui, her daughter Purity Mungai and her company Purma Holdings Limited for failure to pay taxes amounting to Sh2.5 billion.
The authority says Wambui is likely to frustrate the recovery of tax that her businesses owe the state.
But in her replying affidavit dated January 4, the businesswoman says she does not owe KRA the Sh2.5 billion as claimed and only Sh44 million is due to the taxman from her enterprises.
She says by December 9, 2021, a computation by Purma Holdings Limited showed the company owed KRA Sh44 million and had committed to pay the funds of which Sh10 million has already been paid.
She refuted KRA claims saying the company had paid all taxes due to the state for the previous years.
Wambui was on December 6, 2021, charged before the anti-corruption magistrate court with tax evasion amounting to Sh2.5 billion.
She was charged alongside her daughter Purity with whom they are directors at Purma Holdings Limited.
They were released on Sh50 million bail after being charged with eight offences of omitting from tax returns monies which would have been included like taxes and failure to pay taxes.
As such, she says KRA's decision to seek to have her accounts frozen are malicious and an abuse of the court.
“The actions of the applicant were taken in pursuit of a wider scheme to prevent Purity and I from accessing cash from our accounts as well as those of companies in which I am a shareholder and director,” she said.
The targeted accounts are in Equity, Stanbic, Credit Bank, Family and KCB.
Six are registered under Purma Holdings Limited while the rest are in Wambui’s name.
She said KRA instructed Equity Bank not to allow withdrawal of funds from accounts operated by Wambui, Purity and Purma Holdings Limited a day after they were arrested pending arraignment.
“The intention was to ensure we are unable to raise cash bail from our accounts,” she says.
After she was granted bond, Wambui says she could not access funds in her account and the Sh50 million bail was paid from account number 0010270265461 operated by Glee Hotel Limited with Equity Bank Limited.
In granting the bond, the court directed the three shall extend and continue to cooperate with investigations in any matter relating to the charges that may remain unresolved but any new investigations must be sanctioned by the court.
“The applicant cannot seek to compel us to answer for liability for the claimed taxes in the sum of Sh2.5 billion, the subject matter of anti-corruption case No. E 028 of 2021, Republic vs Purma Holdings and two others as doing so would prejudice our defences against the said case,” she said.
KRA had said transactions in the 13 bank accounts revealed the company received a total of Sh9.8 billion into their bank accounts between 2014 and 2019, funds which were not reflected in the iTax ledger.
However, Wambui says there is no sum owed to KRA by her, the company and her daughter on account of unpaid taxes.
“The contents of an affidavit by KRA are not true. We have not engaged in any tax evasion nor are there any bona fide investigations on the claimed tax evasion by KRA,” she says.
Wambui says her bank statements in the accounts only reflect a balance of Sh6.2 million.
She said two accounts from Credit Bank Limited, two from Stanbic are dormant and two from Equity Bank have nil balances.
Edited by Kiilu Damaris