This archive report was first published on 6 August 2020.
On August 6, 2020, Chief Magistrate EA Nyaloti discharged six businessmen, including Philippe Storm, George Zarya, Salil Patel, Ludovic Gunnar, Sunir Doshi, and Anish Doshi, and their company UNI Limited from a Sh42 million tax fraud case.
The court found that the case was a result of wrongful identity against the six accused persons and their company, and the charges against them were withdrawn under Section 87 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
However, the case against three other traders, John Kitchener, Gillespie Steven, and Gary Michael, will proceed as they were found to be the directors of XFOR Security Solutions Ltd, the company accused of failing to remit the Sh42 million to Kenya Revenue Authority.
The six businessmen had complained that they were wrongly charged as directors of XFOR Security Solutions Ltd, leading to fresh investigations that established they were not the company's directors.
The dispute started when the Kenya Revenue Authority wrote to the registrar of companies to identify the directors of XFOR Security Solutions Ltd, and the registrar mistakenly indicated that UNI Limited, owned by the six traders, was a director of the company.
The investigators then sought information on UNI Limited, which led to the charges against the six businessmen. However, their lawyer, Willis Oluga, said that the information was false and that the investigators failed to conduct a thorough search to establish who owned the company.
Oluga also alleged that the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Director of Criminal Investigations acted unreasonably and in bad faith by failing to investigate who the directors of XFOR Security Solutions Ltd were.
