Nairobi News

A Kenyan billionaire has sued a mobile money lending money for messing up his credit rating after it erroneously listed him with the a credit reference bureau (CRB) for a Sh1,000 loan, which he had not borrowed.

The complainant is Kenyan business magnate Peter Nduati, the founder of Resolution Health insurance company and is the CEO of Centric Air, an airline ambulance company.

His portfolio also includes PineCreek Records and Trueblaq Entertainment. By January 2015, he had already built a Sh3 billion fortune.

FIRST-CLASS

To better understand his riches, Mr Nduati told a journalist in a 2015 interview that he follows the Sevens Rugby circuit around the world every year –travelling first class.

“I travel to Dubai, Vegas, London, Scotland and Hong Kong. I know it is an expensive venture but I can afford it now, but if I did not have the money, I wouldn’t do it,” said Mr Nduati in the 2015 interview.

Trouble for Mr Nduati started when his company Centric Air was in the final stages of getting a loan that it had applied for when the bank responsible told him that they could not issue him with the loan. Reason? He had been blacklisted as a defaulter.

“I am very particular in maintaining a good credit score coz I use leverage for investing. The bank could not disclose who had listed me and referred me to CRB,” he said.

That is when he realised that the mobile money lending app (which we can’t name for legal reasons) had reported him in December 2018.

Mr Nduati, who narrated his tribulations on Twitter, said that in his life he has never borrowed from any mobile application.

MAKE MATTERS WORSE

To make matters worse, when he asked about the number that was used to list him, he discovered that it was not even his.

According to him, the network revealed to him that the number in question was not registered in his name but declined to tell him who it belonged to.

“I then went back to CRB with that report who told me that only (the money lender) could clear me and I had to write a dispute letter,” he said.

The company insisted that the number was linked to his ID number and that he had borrowed the Sh1,000/- and defaulted. “I was now pretty tired of the run around and they kept insisting,” he said.

Later, though, he received a call from the CRB that the money lending company had cleared him and that it was an error.

“No further explanation but that transaction has brought my credit score to BB- or something like that which simply means I have a 40 per cent chance of defaulting,” he added.

Mr Nduati says that he is now fighting to sort out his credit score because of the loan that he even never borrowed in the first place.