Kenyan businesswoman Mary Wambui sues Google to scrub news articles about her $16.9 million tax fraud case from search results after the charges were dropped in 2023

Mary Wambui Mungai, one of Kenya's most prominent government procurement tycoons and a financier of President William Ruto's political campaigns, has sued Google in the High Court seeking to force the technology company to remove news articles about her Sh2.2 billion ($16.9 million) tax evasion case from its search results, in what appears to be one of the first major "right to be forgotten" cases filed in Kenya.

Wambui, in her court filing, admits that she was charged in December 2021 with alleged Sh2.2 billion ($16.9 million) criminal tax fraud. She also admits the case was subsequently withdrawn in January 2023. Her argument is that since the charges no longer stand, the articles about them have no continuing legal or public interest justification and should not appear when her name is searched online.

Google has not publicly commented on the case.

The case that will not stay buried

The Sh2.2 billion ($16.9 million) tax evasion case against Wambui and her daughter Purity Njoki Mungai was one of the most dramatic episodes in Kenyan business journalism in recent memory. After the Kenya Revenue Authority summoned Wambui in June 2021, she failed to appear. When she was charged on 8 counts of tax evasion at the Anti-Corruption Court in December 2021, she was nowhere to be found. The Directorate of Criminal Investigations issued an arrest warrant. Airports and border points were sealed to prevent her from leaving the country. A High Court subsequently unfroze 13 of her bank accounts after a judge found that KRA had frustrated her stated willingness to pay.

The case was brought against her and her daughter as directors of Purma Holdings Limited, the procurement company that is the main vehicle of her business empire. Charges were eventually dropped in January 2023 after KRA confirmed that Wambui had compounded the offences and paid the fines imposed by the authority as of December 6, 2022. Lawyers for both accused welcomed the withdrawal, with one describing the prosecution as "anguish" that "should not have reached the stage of prosecution."

The compounding and payment of fines is not an acquittal. It is a mechanism that allows tax matters to be resolved without conviction. The distinction matters in how the law views the original charge: the underlying tax dispute was settled, but the events that led to 8 criminal counts, an arrest warrant and a nationwide dragnet remain part of the public record.

Who Mary Wambui is

Wambui was born in 1963 in Gachika, Gatundu South and passed the government clerical officer proficiency examination in 1999. She holds a business administration degree from Kenya Methodist University. The distance between that starting point and where she now sits is one of the more striking trajectories in Kenyan business history.

Her company Purma Holdings built its profile through government procurement, supplying the military with cereals, uniforms, boots and webbing equipment. During COVID-19, Purma received an Sh90 million ($692,000) direct procurement contract from KEMSA for personal protective equipment. Through contracts with the Kenya National Trading Corporation, her companies secured deals worth approximately Sh9.8 billion ($75.4 million) to supply rice, edible oil and beans, with a Sh3.9 billion ($30 million) rice contract alone generating allegations of an Sh800 million ($6.2 million) taxpayer overpayment. Separate reporting linked Purma and associated companies to Sh30.6 billion ($235.4 million) in security and digital support service contracts, some reportedly awarded without open tender processes.

In December 2022, President Ruto appointed her as non-executive chairperson of the Communications Authority of Kenya, the country's telecommunications regulator. The appointment drew protests from civil society groups who questioned whether someone with tax evasion allegations on her record should hold a senior regulatory position. It also created fresh procurement conflict of interest questions when Sh5 billion ($38.5 million) worth of Digital Super-Highway fibre optic contracts were linked to her business interests during her tenure. Ruto revoked her Communications Authority appointment in August 2025, simultaneously appointing her to chair the Athi Water Works Development Agency.

The legal challenge ahead

The right to be forgotten is a legal concept that has had meaningful traction in Europe since a landmark 2014 Court of Justice of the European Union ruling established that individuals could, under certain conditions, request that search engines delist links to outdated or no longer relevant information about them. The EU's General Data Protection Regulation subsequently gave the principle broader statutory backing.

Kenya does not have equivalent explicit legislation. The Data Protection Act of 2019 contains some provisions around data erasure, but their application to third-party search engine results has not been tested in the courts before. Wambui's case is therefore not simply a dispute with Google about her own past. It is a test of whether Kenyan courts will extend a legal principle derived from European data protection law into a jurisdiction where the underlying statutory framework is significantly less developed.

Google has successfully resisted right to be forgotten claims in multiple jurisdictions outside Europe. The company's standard position is that the public interest in access to accurate information outweighs an individual's interest in suppressing unflattering but truthful records. In Wambui's case, the records in question document a criminal prosecution that resulted in the payment of tax fines. Whether that constitutes ongoing public interest information about a person who has held multiple regulatory appointments and controls companies with billions in government contracts, or outdated information that no longer represents her legal standing, is precisely the question the High Court will be asked to determine.