Exposed: Well paid bank CEOS behaving badly, Cop Bank’s Gedion Muriuki tops

Kenya’s bank Chief Executive Officers (CEO) have for a long time been believed to be pocketing millions of shillings every year. The latest listings of earnings of these CEOs proves that fact.

Despite the accolades and praises they get along the way, there are many gaps that are witnessed when the institutions declare dividends and announce major profits.

It is reported that the six highest-earning bank CEOs took home a total of KSh1 billion in salaries, allowances and bonuses last year alone.

This is due to the increased profitability of the lenders even as other sectors of the economy face financially challenging times.

The chiefs are also claimed to be taking home nearly twice their basic salaries in bonuses and allowances on average amid the scandals and poor governance that are recorded.

Leading the pack, Co-operative Bank’s boss Gideon Muriuki is noted to have been the highest paid CEO in the last financial year, going home with Ksh376 million.

However, Muriuki reign is not smooth-sailing. It is said that despite the profits they return, are soiled by the way their banks operate, which mean a lot to the investors and shareholders, but the sideshows and the scandals that rock the country’s leading bank CEO is wanting.

Social media has been awash with scandals involving Cooperative Bank employees and ways they use to pilfer money from the customers, poor internal mechanisms to run their business and for Muriuki as a church going person, a long running rumour about a sex scandal that has refused to go.

On the other hand, a land dispute by a group of greedy naive squatters on his property in Donholm Estate has refused to go and will not be in the coming future. Though aggrieved by the squatters whose intent is to settle on the land and wait for the government to declare them settlers, the fact that the matter is in court soils the name of the CEO, one of the bank’s leading shareholders.

He was followed by Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB)’s boss Joshua Oigara, who pocketed Ksh273 million.

The two chiefs attributed the bulk of their salaries to performance-based bonuses. Whereas Muriuki’s basic salary for the year was Ksh105.5 million, Mr Oigara’s was Ksh68 million.

Responding to queries on the CEO’s pay, KCB noted: “The main driver for the increase in the executive directors’ pay was bonus payment, which is performance-based and an enhancement in the bonus policy for employees,” said KCB in an earlier response to queries on the CEO’s pay.

“Bonus and salary adjustments for staff are tied to achievement of multiple metrics, including profitability of the group and at all times reflect the bank’s performance in a year,” they concluded.

Oigara on his part if faced by a rumour that his bank played a role in financing the Jubilee Party campaigns in 2017, something that they have not denied. The figures bandied for the amount KCB gave to the Jubilee election machine varies. Not reported in the media is a fact that several cases of relationships with the female employees have been reported in the past.

In the early days of his reign in the bank, Oigara is said to have orchestrated the employment of a man from his tribe who had to resign within less than two months of taking up the job after employees of the country’s largest bank leaked the information to the media.

The director who has phony degrees and certificates was forced to resign after the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) caught wind of the story, forcing the unheralded exit.

NIC Bank MD John Gachora recorded a decrease in his salary as he got Ksh95.9 million as opposed to Ksh98 million in 2017.

However, Gachora, who has been on the ropes after a recent merger with Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) in a deal that has raised eyebrows in the country’s financial sector after it emerged that the financial industry bigwigs turned a blind eye on a requirement by the banks.

Barclays Bank CEO Jeremy Awori has been listed fifth for being paid Kah66.8 million.

Barclays Bank have in the recent past been caught in several cases involving their employees and an infamous case where one of their branches in the CBD was found to be used by a criminal network to use its facilities to store fake gold and dollars.

Last week, Tanzania’s central bank has fined two Kenyan banks Sh55.78 million for breaking anti-money laundering rules, as regulators in East Africa move to curb the flow of illicit money.

The Bank of Tanzania (BoT) said in a statement yesterday that the fines were imposed for failure to conduct proper customer due diligence and file suspicious transaction reports to the state-backed Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).

I&M Bank was slapped with the biggest fine of Sh29.58 million followed by Equity Bank (Sh26.2 million).

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