Pioneer indigenous banker Mugo Mungai dies

Mugo Mungai, Founding father of Capital Finance Restricted and Pioneer Constructing Society. FILE PHOTO | NMG

Mugo Mungai, the pioneer indigenous banker who impressed many different Kenyan entrepreneurs, is useless.

Mungai, 81, died whereas nonetheless combating to get well his two banks and belongings value billions of shillings that the State seized throughout former President Daniel Moi’s Kanu regime.

Learn: Founding father of fallen Moi-era companies Mungai claims frustration in Sh7bn case

“Mzee has rested after ailing for 2 weeks,” his son, Mungai Mugo, confirmed, disclosing that he was admitted to a Nairobi hospital after creating diabetes and coronary heart problems.

Mungai owned two monetary establishments; Capital Finance Restricted and Pioneer Constructing Society, which he based at 36. He additionally owned Pioneer Property, which had 259 maisonettes in Nairobi and Capital Home within the Metropolis centre.

Apart from that, Mungai owned 50 half-acre plots within the up-market Gigiri, close to Unep, Nairobi. On the present market charge, Mungai’s belongings can be value greater than Sh8 billion.

Nonetheless, all his properties have been taken along with the monetary establishments that he had constructed as President Moi’s authorities seized most indigenous banks.

“My financial institution was by no means in hassle,” Mungai advised this author just a few years in the past.  

However he discovered them locked on the morning of November 13, 1986. As he advised the court docket within the long-delayed seek for justice, the banks “have been stable establishments with no monetary issues.”

Had his properties not been taken, he additionally advised the court docket just a few years in the past they might be valued at Sh7 billion, turning him into one of many wealthiest Kenyans.

Born in Kanyariri in Kabete, Mugo had first skilled in shorthand and labored as a stenographer. His first job in 1959 was as a secretary to Kimani Ngumba, who would later rise to develop into Nairobi Mayor and a banker.

“Earlier than I registered Pioneer Constructing Society in 1978, my solely competitor was the East African Constructing Society. There was no different working at the moment,” he says as a matter of reality. East African Constructing Society was based by the late Kenyan billionaire Lalit Pandit in 1959 underneath the Constructing Societies Act of 1956.

Mungai’s dying leaves a bitter style of injustice, on condition that he died earlier than the battle for his huge property was resolved.