Imperial Bank, which is in the process of closing down and selling its assets, has taken control of Salute Holdings, the Nairobi company behind iWorld, one of East Africa’s biggest authorized sellers of Apple products.
The move is part of a wider push by the bank to recover money owed to it by borrowers who have fallen behind on payments.
A receiver and manager, Kamal Anantroy Bhatt of Anant Bhatt LLP, was appointed on May 5, 2026, under Kenya’s Insolvency Act. That appointment strips Salute Holdings’ directors, including founder Vivek Mehra, of any say over the company’s operations.
From now on, Bhatt alone has the authority to run the business and decide what happens to its assets.
In a public notice, Bhatt made clear that nobody else can buy, sell, transfer, or otherwise deal with the company’s property without his written go-ahead. Anyone who tries risks legal action.
Salute Holdings was founded by Mehra in 1999 as a distributor of well-known international consumer brands. Over the years it grew into a group with several businesses.
Its flagship is iWorld, which sells iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches, AirPods, and accessories, and also handles Apple-certified repairs.
The group also sells accessories from brands like Belkin, Promate, and Beats, runs a sports retail chain called SportsPlanet that stocks gear from Nike, Adidas, and Puma, among others, and operates Sensations, which focuses on premium audio gear and lifestyle electronics.
Creditors now have 30 days to file their claims with the receiver, and the company’s directors have been given 12 days to hand over a full statement of the business’s financial affairs.
This is not an isolated case. Bhatt has recently placed two other companies, Sparetech Trading Company and Mawa Dairy Farm, under receivership as well, all tied to unpaid debts owed to Imperial Bank.
Imperial Bank itself has been under government receivership since October 2015, after regulators uncovered a massive fraud involving insider lending and irregular transactions.
Since then, some of its assets and liabilities were absorbed by KCB Bank Kenya, while the rest of the institution has been focused on clawing back bad debt so it can eventually repay depositors and creditors still owed money.
