Philip Murgor, one of the country’s most senior lawyers, has threatened to sue the Kenyatta family-affiliated NCBA Bank for incorrectly listing him as a loan defaulter on a disputed Sh1,300 Fuliza loan.
Mr Murgor, one of the few senior counsels, has accused NCBA of failing to verify the information before incorrectly listing him as a loan defaulter with credit reference bureaus.
The negative listing, he adds, hampered his attempts to obtain financing for insurance for his law firm, Murgor & Murgor Advocates.
On May 7, 2021, NCBA reported Mr Murgor to credit bureaus after its records revealed that a mobile phone number registered with the prominent lawyer’s identity card had defaulted on the Fuliza loan.
According to NCBA, the phone number at the heart of the Sh1,300 loan dispute was registered using Mr Murgor’s identification documents, but Mr Murgor claims the line is in the name of another person.
NCBA, on the other hand, claims that the phone number was registered in Mr Murgor’s name at the time the Fuliza loan was disbursed.
Fuliza is an overdraft service provided by NCBA, KCB Bank, and Safaricom that allows subscribers to complete financial transactions from their mobile phone wallets even if their balance is insufficient.
On September 23, 2022, Mr Murgor applied to NCBA for Sh403,000 in financing to pay for insurance premiums for his law firm, but the application was denied due to the Fuliza loan.
An NCBA representative called Mr Murgor to inform him that the loan application could not be processed until the Sh1,300 debt was fully repaid. Despite the lawyer’s request for more information on the disputed debt, she refused to reveal which institution had listed Mr Murgor negatively.
Mr Murgor requested to speak with her boss. On September 28, the superior called Mr Murgor but refused to reveal which institution had done the listing.
Mr Murgor requested a credit report from Metropol Corporation Limited, which revealed that NCBA had listed him negatively for the Sh1,300 overdraft that he never used.
On the same day, an NCBA branch manager informed Mr Murgor that the bank was the listing institution in an email. This, he claims, is evidence that the other two agents who called also knew it was their employer who had listed Mr Murgor but purposefully withheld the information.
Mr Murgor has threatened to sue NCBA, accusing the lender of failing to verify whether he had borrowed money through Fuliza.
