This archive report was first published on 18 June 2021.
On June 9, 2021, the Senate's Agriculture Committee directed the receiver manager to re-advertise the bid to salvage Mumias Sugar Company within 14 days.
However, activist Okiya Omtatah has moved to court seeking to temporarily suspend this directive, alleging that receiver manager Ponangipalli Venkata Ramana Rao has engaged in a secretive bidding process.
According to Omtatah, Rao invited eight investors, including Catalysis Group of Russia, Sarrai Group of Uganda, and Kibos Sugar and Devki Group, to bid for the company.
But Omtatah claims that none of these bidders had the capacity to revive the company, and that Rao's actions were aimed at disposing of the company to his cronies.
He also alleged that Rao has mismanaged the ethanol operations, shut them down in March 2021, and failed to plant sugarcane on 307 hectares of the Nucleus Estate.
Omtatah further claimed that Rao has not published a general statement of affairs on the assets and liabilities of the company, nor has he published periodic reports on his efforts to reduce the KCB Group debt.
He argued that the receiver manager has been on site for close to two years with nothing positive to show for it, and that his actions pose a danger to the public.
‘Whereas when a company is put in receivership certain rights of its owners are extinguished, and the appointed receiver takes control of the asset and works solely in the interests of the secured creditor, the case of Mumias different,’ Omtatah said.
