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Businesswoman Mary Wambui Mungai has accused Kenya Revenue Authority of harassing her and frustrating her business in the guise of revenue collection.

Mungai in response to a suit filed by KRA, which seeks to freeze five of her bank accounts, says she does not owe any tax to the agency and the several applications by KRA are meant to frustrate her businesses.

Mungai, pictured, her daughter Purity Njoki Mungai and their company Purma Holdings were charged last year with evading taxes amounting to Sh2.5 billion for the period of 2014 to 2019.

KRA then moved to the Commercial and Tax Division in a bid to recover the said monies in her five bank accounts and sought an order prohibiting the release, transfer and payment of Sh2.5 billion held in the said accounts.

The five bank accounts are in Equity Bank, Credit Bank, CFC Stanbic Bank, Family Bank and KCB.

KRA claimed there are no known assets belonging to the company, Purma Holdings, satisfying the taxes to be found due and payable other than the said monies in the five bank accounts.

But in response, Mungai claims Purma Holdings had computed the sum lawfully due from it as Sh44.6 million  and was settling the same in installments  and providing KRA  with all the documents and information  required of it even as investigations continued.

“Purma Holdings paid all taxes due from it and had been issued with a Tax Compliance certificate from the period claimed under inquiry which is 2014 to 2019,” she says in an affidavit.

She says the instructions by KRA to Equity Bank Limited not to allow the company to transfer or withdraw money from four accounts operated by herself and the company were given on December 6, 2021 when charges against her and her daughter were lodged.

She argues the actions of KRA were taken in pursuit of a wider scheme conceived by the taxman to prevent her daughter and herself from accessing cash bail after they had been charged.

“The action was so that we could not raise a cash bail of Sh 50 million in the case where we are charged with eight counts relating to omission of taxes,” she says in court documents.

Mungai stated that she paid her cash bail from one of the accounts at Equity Bank, which is operated by another one of her companies, Glee Hotel Limited.

She says on the day she appeared in court on December 9 and pleaded to the charges , KRA  wrote to Equity Bank Limited not allowing the transfer or withdrawal of money from accounts operated by her four other companies.

“The intention was to ensure that we were unable to raise cash bail from the accounts operated by my other company,” she says in court documents.