Kenya withdraws financial impropriety case against Flutterwave

In what seems like a long-awaited victory, Kenya has withdrawn its charges of financial impropriety against Flutterwave, per Bloomberg. 

The withdrawal of the charges was noted in a Kenyan High Court document.

This occurred almost seven months after a court in the East African nation froze the fintech juggernaut’s bank accounts. Flutterwave was accused of fraud and money laundering, which led to the court case’s beginning in July 2022. According to Kenya’s Assets Recovery Agency (ARA), the court froze 6.2 billion Shillings held by the fintech giant in various Kenyan banks.

“The first respondent’s (Flutterwave) bank accounts received billions in a suspected scheme of money laundering and the same deposited in different bank accounts in an attempt to conceal or disguise the nature, source, location, disposition or movement of the said funds,” ARA said at the time.

Flutterwave asserted that all the disputed transactions could be independently verified and denied any wrongdoing. “By facilitating payments for the biggest organizations in the world and everyday businesses, we process significantly large volumes of money and contribute to growing the economy in Kenya and the rest of Africa,” a part of its statement at the time read. 

The dismissal of the case will benefit the financial technology business, which plans to increase the number of businesses it assists with cross-border transactions in multiple currencies, including Uber Technologies Inc. and Alibaba’s Alipay.