Flutterwave has been hit by a court order freezing 45 bank accounts it owns. Furthermore 10 Mobile money wallets are also frozen. The Nigerian Fintech and Africa’s most valuable unicorn, was sued by Nigerian nationals in a Kenyan court.
In a ruling last week, High Court judge Alfred Mabeya made the order following successful plea by a group of Nigerian Nationals. In total, 2,468 Nigerian nationals allege the pan African start-up was the vehicle used to defraud them of $12.04 million (Sh1.6 billion).
Additionally, six other financial institutions were named as interested parties. Interestingly, all the institutions are financial giants in their regions of operations.
Five of the named interested parties are banks. They are Access Bank, Equity Bank, Ecobank, United Bank of Africa. In addition to the banks, Safaricom PLC was named as a party of interest. This is because Flutterwave operates 10 PayBill Numbers on the telco’s Mpesa Platform.
This news comes shortyly after Flutterwave was intergrated as a Payment app on the Uber app in Kenya.
The judge ordered the accounts remain frozen for 14 days.
Flutterwave Controversies Continue
The fintech is no stranger to court processes and unfavourable rulings.
Only last year, the company faced money laundering and fraud accusations. The accusations were labelled by Kenya’s Assets Recovery Agency (ARA). As a result, Flutterwave accounts with $52.5 million were frozen.
However, ARA withdrew its case. Hence, Flutterwave was granted access to its accounts on this occasion.
We wait to see what happens after the latest court order.
