An executive of Pesapal has been quizzed by detectives from the Banking Fraud Investigations Unit (BFIU) over wire fraud allegations.
BFIU is a specialised unit within the Directorate of Criminal Investigations tasked with probing fraud and financial crime complaints, while Pesapal is a Nairobi-based digital payments processor.
Documents in the possession of the Daily Nation show that the executive was summoned after two Chinese nationals lodged a complaint against Pesapal after they lost Sh24, 510,793.
Redspot Lotus Company Limited, which is owned by Deng Benjun and Shi Jiasheng, has told investigators that its internal audit uncovered that a staff member working in the company colluded with a Pesapal staff member and forged board resolution minutes of Redspot Lotus Company Limited, which they later used to alter account privileges, resulting in huge unauthorised financial withdrawals.
“We write to formally lodge a criminal complaint regarding a well-coordinated fraud syndicate involving forgery, identity theft and cyber financial crime that resulted in the unauthorised siphoning of Sh24, 510,793 from our corporate merchant account. Our internal audit has recently uncovered that a rogue staff member of our company, acting in criminal collusion with staff members embedded inside the accused payment processing company, executed a highly sophisticated insider fraud scheme,” Redspot Lotus Company says in its complaint letter to BFIU.
Mr Deng Benjun has further told investigators that a few months ago, they noted one of their employees used their company documents and contracted Pesapal to process their digital commercial payments. Mr Benjun further claims that Pesapal went ahead to employ the same man suspected to be involved in the scheme as the agent of the plaintiff in the matter.
“I also acknowledge that the company (Pesapal) employed (name withheld) to serve as our accountant and had been appointed by the company as an agent to I&M Bank. The company conducted books reconciliation and established that the payments were done through Pesapal, which the company has never contracted,” Mr Deng Benjun’s statement reads in part.
Already, BFIU has moved to court through a miscellaneous application and secured orders to investigate the accounts of Pesapal, with I&M Bank and Safaricom cited as respondents in the matter.
BFIU has told the court that the orders sought should be extended to investigating all electronic data pertaining to the matter in question, system transaction logs, IP access history, communication logs and administrator token logs relating to merchant account name Redspot Lotus Company Limited among other trail documents and logins.
Also to be investigated are certified account statements between January 1, 2023, and February 13, 2026, account-opening documentation, minutes and mandates for the account, board resolution minutes used to onboard Pesapal, and the appointment of an authorised agent.
BFIU sleuths have also told the court in their application that they want the compliance officers at the bank and the telecommunication company to record statements, given that the transactions were alleged to have been fraudulently done through their platforms.
Redspot Lotus Company Limited has told investigators that the siphoning was done through a well-calculated system manipulation and deceptive reporting scheme.
Investigation documents allege that the suspected employee had direct custody of the operational backend reports generated from the Pesapal merchant dashboard, and for every monthly and quarterly audit cycle, he reportedly altered the Excel and PDF ledgers and adjusted the figures to hide the siphoned amounts by embedding them within regular, high-volume digital business expenses or falsely labelling them as pending merchant settlements.
The complainants have told investigators that the siphoning did not happen as a single conspicuous withdrawal. They claim the account was emptied in staggered, fragmented micro-amounts.
“Because our company processes a massive volume of micro-transactions daily through banks, these illicit outflows were structurally masked within the regular daily cash payments,” Redspot Lotus Company Limited has told BFIU.
Detectives investigating the matter have told the court they are seeking orders to investigate Pesapal because their preliminary investigations have revealed that the alleged employee of the complainant, acting in criminal collusion with internal operations staff at Pesapal, executed the insider fraud scheme.
