I&M Bank Ordered to Pay Ex-Credit Analyst KSh1.14 Million After Court Finds Dismissal Was Unfair

A Kenyan court has handed former I&M Bank credit analyst Daddius Tom Mongare a decisive victory, ruling that the lender unfairly dismissed him after accusing him of improperly accessing a senior director’s bank account.

In a judgement that sharply rebukes the bank’s disciplinary process, the Employment and Labour Relations Court found the dismissal rested more on suspicion than proof and failed to meet the standards of fairness required by law.

Justice Ocharo Kebira ordered I&M Bank to pay Mongare KSh1,141,430 in compensation, accrued leave, and notice pay, alongside interest, legal costs, and a certificate of service.

The ruling, delivered in Mombasa on July 16, is likely to resonate across Kenya’s tightly regulated banking industry, where confidentiality remains paramount but due process is equally protected under employment law.

At the centre of the dispute was a single login on March 23, 2024. Mongare, then serving as a Credit Analyst in the bank’s Personal and Business Banking division, accessed a joint United States dollar account belonging to Sarit S. Raja Shah, a director of I&M Bank and Group Executive Director of Coast Bottlers Limited, together with his wife, Minal Shah.

Suspension and Dismissal

Weeks later, the bank suspended him before summarily dismissing him for gross misconduct, alleging he had breached customer confidentiality and destroyed the trust essential in banking.

Yet Mongare consistently maintained there was nothing sinister about the access.

He told the court he was undertaking preliminary due diligence after a relationship manager informed him that Coast Bottlers was exploring a vehicle acquisition that could require bank financing through Rentworks East Africa.

According to Mongare, reviewing relationships between corporate borrowers and their directors formed part of his ordinary credit analysis responsibilities.

That explanation became the turning point of the case.

Justice Kebira found the account “both detailed and plausible”, noting it remained largely unrebutted throughout the proceedings.

More damaging for the bank, the judge observed that investigators never interviewed Zadock, the relationship manager whom Mongare identified as the person who initiated the assignment.

The bank later admitted that Zadock was a “vital witness”, yet neither investigators nor the disciplinary committee sought his evidence.

The court drew an adverse inference, concluding the omission substantially weakened the employer’s case.

The judgement dismantled the bank’s investigation piece by piece.

No Evidence of Disclosure

Although I&M Bank argued that unknown callers later contacted the account holder’s spouse while appearing to possess confidential banking information, the court found no evidence linking Mongare to any disclosure.

No telephone records were produced. The alleged callers were never identified. The customer herself never testified, while her statement was neither incorporated into the investigation nor presented before court.

“There is nothing beyond suspicion connecting the Claimant to the disclosure of the customer’s private details,” Justice Kebira concluded.

Equally troubling, the court found inconsistencies within the bank’s own evidence.

One witness conceded that several employees accessed the same account on the material day without disciplinary consequences.

Another insisted Mongare alone had viewed it.

The contradiction, the judge held, struck “at the heart” of the employer’s case and undermined the reliability of the disciplinary process itself.

If the investigation faltered, the disciplinary process fared even worse.

The court found Mongare never received the mandatory show-cause letter required by both the Employment Act and the bank’s own human resources policy.

Instead, he was suspended and simultaneously summoned to a disciplinary hearing just six days later.

Bank officials defended that decision by describing the matter as “sensitive”.

The judge dismissed that reasoning in emphatic terms, observing that serious allegations demand stricter procedural safeguards rather than fewer.

The court also found that the investigation report relied upon to dismiss Mongare was never supplied to him before the hearing, despite the bank claiming otherwise.

Its own investigator conceded the report had neither been shared with the employee nor produced before court.

That failure, Justice Kebira said, deprived Mongare of a meaningful opportunity to defend himself.

Perhaps the judgement’s strongest criticism concerned what the court viewed as a predetermined process.

The suspension letter stated investigations were necessary to establish the truth. Yet the same document had already fixed the disciplinary hearing date.

Justice Kebira questioned how meaningful investigations could occur after the disciplinary machinery had effectively been set in motion, concluding the process created the appearance that the outcome had been substantially decided before Mongare was heard.

The judge further held that even assuming the account access was inappropriate, summary dismissal remained disproportionate.

Less Severe Sanction

Drawing on Kenyan and comparative jurisprudence, the court reasoned that a reasonable employer would have considered a less severe sanction while conducting a fuller investigation, particularly where there was no evidence the employee actually leaked confidential information.

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Ultimately, the court declared the dismissal unfair on both substantive and procedural grounds, awarding Mongare one month’s salary in lieu of notice, payment for 84 accrued leave days and seven months’ compensation for unfair termination, bringing the total award to KSh 1,141,430.

I&M Bank was also ordered to issue his certificate of service within fourteen days and meet the costs of the suit.

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