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Kenya's High Court has ordered a review of criminal proceedings against businessman Benson Ndeta and his co-accused Charles Hills Jnr, adding a new layer of judicial scrutiny to a Sh4.5 billion loan fraud case that has been grinding through the courts for years and shows no sign of resolution anytime soon.
The case centres on allegations that the two men fraudulently obtained a $35 million credit facility from Absa Bank Kenya between February 2017 and January 2018, while presenting themselves as acting on behalf of Savannah Cement Limited. Prosecutors say they induced the bank to accept security documents that purported to bind Savannah Cement but were, according to the state, not authentic.
Business Daily Africa reported that the High Court ordered lower court records to be produced as Ndeta and Hills pursue separate efforts to stop or significantly disrupt the criminal process before it can move to plea taking.
The pair face 12 counts between them, including conspiracy to commit fraud, obtaining credit by false pretences, forgery, uttering forged documents and irregular registration of a certificate of indemnity. The prosecution's case rests on the claim that Hills procured the execution of security documentation by inducing Absa to accept papers it believed were issued by Savannah Cement. Ndeta, identified as the proprietor of Savannah Clinker Limited and a former chairman of Savannah Cement, is accused of preparing and presenting forged records, including a guarantee and indemnity form, a subordination agreement and extracts of board minutes.
The review request was filed by Hills, who argues the prosecution constitutes an abuse of court process. His application leans partly on a September 2025 High Court ruling in a related civil matter, where a judge found that the disputed transactions were not solely attributable to him. That civil finding has now been woven into the defense argument against the criminal case, giving his lawyers a basis to challenge the prosecution before plea taking has even begun.
Ndeta has been fighting the case on a separate front. He pursued constitutional litigation seeking to halt the prosecution entirely. Business Daily reported that a court dismissed one of his petitions in December 2025, finding that the Director of Public Prosecutions had acted lawfully and that there was no evidence of prosecutorial abuse or bad faith. That ruling cleared the path for the criminal matter to proceed, though Ndeta and Hills have continued pushing back through higher courts.
The lower court case has moved at a crawl. A Nairobi magistrate extended warrants of arrest against both accused after they failed to appear in court to take plea. The matter was then deferred pending the outcome of the High Court application, leaving the prosecution in a holding pattern while procedural arguments play out above it.
The case has attracted sustained attention in Kenyan legal and business circles for two reasons: the size of the disputed loan and the sheer volume of parallel legal filings the accused have generated. A Sh4.5 billion dispute involving one of the country's major international banks, a former cement executive and contested corporate guarantees is exactly the kind of matter that tends to spill beyond the courtroom into boardrooms and banking halls, especially when the underlying question involves whether a corporate transaction crossed the line from civil dispute into criminal conduct.
The High Court review does not end the prosecution. It does not come close to an acquittal. What it does is place the criminal process under fresh judicial examination at a point when the accused are still working to prevent the magistrate's court from moving forward. The court now has to assess the lower court record and decide whether there is sufficient reason to interfere with how the prosecution has been conducted.
Until that assessment is complete, the case sits where it has been sitting for some time: suspended between criminal process and procedural resistance, with its next meaningful development likely to arrive from an appellate argument rather than from the fraud allegations at the heart of it.
