Kenyan banker Gideon Muriuki faces a bid to suspend him from Co-op Bank days after winning court protection

Gideon Muriuki won a court order on Friday keeping prosecutors away from him. Days later. a petitioner asked the same court to take his bank away from him.

Four days after Kenya's High Court barred prosecutors from arresting or charging him, an activist has gone back to the same court asking it to stop Muriuki exercising the powers, duties and functions of Co-operative Bank chief executive while a constitutional petition challenging his continued stay in office is heard.

The petitioner, Francis Awino, is not arguing that Muriuki is guilty of anything. He concedes the point directly, acknowledging the presumption of innocence under Article 50(2)(a) of the constitution, then sets it aside as beside the point.

"Although the 2nd Respondent, Gideon Muriuki, enjoys the constitutional presumption of innocence guaranteed under Article 50(2)(a) of the Constitution, the constitutional principles of leadership and integrity established under Chapter Six are independent of criminal culpability," the court papers state.

That is the whole argument in one sentence. Chapter Six sets standards for holding office that operate separately from whether a prosecution succeeds. Awino says Muriuki holds a position of immense fiduciary responsibility involving billions of shillings belonging to depositors, investors, pension schemes and the public, and that confidence in a bank is inseparable from confidence in the person running it.

None of it started at Co-operative Bank. Prosecutors allege First Assurance Investment Company lost about Sh363.3 million, roughly $2.8 million, over several years, and charged Muriuki with failing to report suspicious transactions. He was not alone. The chief executives of NCBA and KCB were charged in the same sweep.

Justice Gregory Mutai halted all of it on Aug. 7, issuing interim conservatory orders that restrained the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations from arresting, charging or prosecuting the bank and its chief executive. Proceedings in Milimani Chief Magistrate's Court Criminal Case No. E451 of 2026 were stayed. Respondents have 14 days to reply and the matter returns to court on Oct. 12.

Muriuki has run Co-operative Bank since 2001, when he inherited a lender that had lost Sh2.3 billion the previous year. It reported a record pre-tax profit of Sh40.3 billion, about $310 million, for the year to December 2025, up 15.8 percent, on assets of Sh827.4 billion. He remains its largest individual shareholder.

A suspension would separate him from the bank without a court ever reaching the fraud allegations.