Even as punters continue placing bets on the famous Betika platform, High Court orders at Milimani have effectively switched off any lawful basis for Shop and Deliver Limited, trading as Betika, to operate under a fresh licence.
The gap between judicial restraint and ongoing commercial activity has forced the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Kenya into an emergency posture, with the Attorney General’s office pressing for answers ahead of a critical mention.
The interim conservatory orders issued by Lady Justice Tabitha Wanyama Ouya on 6 October 2026 in Judicial Review Application HCJR/E350 of 2026 place a clear bar on the Authority. They prevent approval, issuance or activation of any new gambling operating licence for the company. Where a licence may already exist on paper, the orders block implementation, further effect or any facilitation of operations. The restraint remains in force pending proper consideration of three formal complaints lodged earlier in the year, or until the court directs otherwise. A penal notice accompanies the certified orders, warning that disobedience carries personal consequences for those who ignore it.
Why the Freeze Extends Through the Weekend and Into Tuesday
The orders were granted for four days pending mention, now set for Tuesday, 13 October 2026. With Mazingira Day falling on Saturday and Sunday outside court sitting days, the prohibition carries unbroken force across the weekend. Meanwhile, the Authority’s own public notice of 18 August 2026 had already terminated all previous bookmaker and public-gambling licences effective 24 September. Any claim that a fresh licence somehow bridges that expiry is undermined by the court’s explicit freeze. Operating in that intervening space amounts to trading without the regulatory foundation the new Gambling Control Act regime demands.
Sources familiar with the litigation indicate that the Authority’s board was convened for an emergency sitting on Friday.
The Attorney General, whose lawyers represent the Authority, has reportedly been seeking clarity on what submissions will be presented to the court. By Friday morning the Authority had still not issued any written determination on the three complaints that form the heart of the judicial review. Its last substantive communication to the complainant, dated 31 July, merely confirmed that investigations remained ongoing.
The Corporate Structure and Names That Keep Recurring
Shop and Deliver Limited, registration CPR/2010/37880, holds the Betika brand. Its registered offices sit at Beverly Court on Lenana Road, with operational headquarters at Mayfair Business Centre on Parklands Road. Under the previous regime it held licences BK-0001117 and PG-0001113. Chris Mwirigi Kaumbuthu appears as director and controlling individual shareholder. George Mburu, the co-founder, features repeatedly in the forensic material. John Kiritu sits on the board, while Robinson Mutua Mutava serves as current CEO. Roamtech Solutions Limited, a technology vehicle linked to Mburu, is listed both as director and shareholder.
These are the individuals and entities the Directorate of Criminal Investigations forensic file and subsequent High Court records continue to surface.
The Data That Built the Book
Between June 2018 and May 2019, former Safaricom employees Simon Billy Kinuthia and Brian Wamatu Njoroge extracted and sold subscriber data on a scale the DCI later quantified at 29.9 million customers. Within that haul sat a commercially valuable subset of roughly 11.5 million identified punters. The material included names, national identity numbers, M-Pesa transaction histories, wager amounts, betting frequency, handset identifiers and location data down to locality level. Kinuthia’s recovered message of 17 July 2018 confirmed he held full details of the 29.9 million customers backed up.
Sales occurred in tranches rather than a single dump: sample data first, price negotiation, then delivery after payment. Investigating officer Sergeant Joseph Chebor later described a deliberately layered chain designed so that the ultimate buyer would not need to know the precise origin. That layering did not, however, remove the buyer’s name from the recovered WhatsApp communications. Investigative accounts of the forensic record identify Betika as the most frequent purchaser, returning for multiple separate tranches across the eleven-month period. The same message chains that reference “Andrew” of a rival operator also name “Mburu” and “Betika.”
What the High Court Placed on the Public Record
In Constitutional Petition E095 of 2026, decided on 13 May 2026, Justice Bahati Mwamuye found that subscriber and betting-related data had been repeatedly disseminated to third parties for commercial purposes across those eleven months. Each of the eleven petitioners received an award of Sh900,000. Paragraph 67 of the judgment noted that forensic analysis of the WhatsApp communications materially reinforced the inference of a sustained and systemic compromise. The communications referenced recipients identified as “Andrew,” “Odibet,” “the Mburus,” “Betika,” “Charles” and “the Mule,” among others.
The evidence was introduced by Safaricom itself as Annexure ATM-3. The court was careful to record in paragraph 70 that it was not determining the truth of material belonging to other proceedings, and that Betika was not a party to the petition. What the judgment achieved was to place those names firmly on the judicial record. The originating motion now before Lady Justice Ouya asks the Authority to treat that record, together with the DCI extracts, as material it must consider under the fit-and-proper test in section 30 of the Gambling Control Act, 2025, before any fresh licence can lawfully operate.
Criminal Complaints and the Charges Laid Out
On 19 May 2026 Benedict Kabugi Ndungu filed a formal complaint with Mohamed I. Amin, Director of Criminal Investigations, and with the then Director-General of the Gambling Regulatory Authority. It named Shop and Deliver Limited trading as Betika, cited the old licence numbers, and demanded investigation, suspension or cancellation. The complaint set out four potential heads of liability drawn from the forensic record: handling stolen property under section 322 of the Penal Code; computer fraud under section 26 of the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act (carrying up to twenty years); money laundering under section 3 of the Proceeds of Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Act, referencing payments channelled through intermediaries described as “mules”; and conspiracy to commit a felony under section 393 of the Penal Code.
Reporting in June drew parallels with the Aligula arrest at Gigiri and questioned whether the Betika founders named in the same chain would follow. Secondary accounts later spoke of detention, yet the court file and forensic record remain the firmest ground. Questions of personal custody continue, but the regulatory fitness question has already crystallised.
Legal Shortcuts and the Race Against the Clock
What emerges from the timeline is a pattern of regulatory manoeuvring that critics describe as attempts at legal shortcuts. After the High Court judgment in May, three successive complaints were lodged: the initial May filing, a July follow-up focused on fit-and-proper consequences, and a formal statutory demand on 31 August for a written decision. The Authority’s only substantive reply came on 31 July, confirming investigations were active. Silence followed.
During that silence the Authority issued its 18 August notice inviting fresh applications under the new regime and terminating every existing operating licence on 24 September.
The judicial review filed by KK Waweru Advocates does not invite the court to decide whether Betika deserves a licence. It asks only that the Authority be restrained from licensing first and considering the complaints later. On 6 October the court granted that restraint.
Operating after the 24 September expiry while a fresh licence remains frozen by court order is precisely the kind of gap-filling that the new regulatory architecture was designed to close. Section 37 of the Gambling Control Act empowers the Authority to investigate a licensee on information from any person.
Regulations 61 to 66 require thorough vetting of directors, shareholders, beneficial owners and key employees. Both Mwirigi and Mburu fall squarely within that net, as do any intermediary payments recorded in the forensic file.
Attempting to secure or activate paper while those questions remain unresolved looks less like ordinary licence renewal and more like an effort to present the court with a fait accompli.
The Payout Record That Compounds the Fitness Question
The data controversy is not the only file sitting before regulators. In 2024 a Nakuru punter, David Juma, successfully sued Shop and Deliver in the Small Claims Court after an Sh10 Sababisha ticket initially treated as a KSh 500,000 win was allegedly altered into a loss. The court ordered payment. Claire Nyabayo’s claim arising from the Magic Numbers game, in which she said the platform displayed nearly KSh 100 million, produced a different outcome. Betika characterised the result as a logic bug, invoked a KSh 1 million cap in its terms, and paid only that amount. The then Betting Control and Licensing Board, the High Court and ultimately the Court of Appeal declined to expand the payout.
In January 2026 the Kenya Consumer Rights Alliance petitioned the predecessor board over what it described as disturbing patterns: accounts frozen within hours of substantial wins, support tickets that led nowhere, more than 200 complaints in four months and disputed winnings exceeding KSh 50 million. Individual cases, such as that of Thika mechanic Peter Mwangi still waiting on KSh 876,000, illustrated the pattern. Ethiopia had already revoked the company’s licence. By September 2026 social media platforms carried numerous screenshots of withdrawals marked successful that never arrived in M-Pesa accounts, alongside dark jokes that merely mentioning withdrawals caused accounts to “tremble.”
The recurring method appears consistent: deposits are accepted instantly; large wins are parked behind pending status, verification hurdles or contractual clauses many punters never closely read. The paybill remains open. That operational posture, layered on top of the data record, forms part of the fitness assessment the Authority is now under court pressure to complete.
What Tuesday’s Mention Will Test
If Shop and Deliver continues settling bets through the weekend and into the mention date, it does so on a licence the Authority is expressly forbidden to permit. The penal notice draws no distinction between a board that chooses to look away and an individual officer who activates operations.
By Tuesday the Authority is expected to have filed its submissions. It may arrive with a reasoned determination of the May, July and August complaints. Or it may find itself explaining why an operator repeatedly named in a High Court judgment and a DCI forensic report was allowed to keep trading after 24 September on documentation the court has frozen. The fit-and-proper test under the 2025 Act is not a formality; it is the statutory mechanism designed to prevent precisely this kind of unresolved history from remaining attached to a live licence.
Punters placing stakes in the current window are not dealing with a fully regulated book in the ordinary sense. They are participating in the final float of a company whose licensing foundation has been judicially switched off and whose key figures have seen the shadows that once protected them steadily shorten.
The court has set the date. The Authority must now show whether it intends to obey the order or test the reach of the penal notice that accompanies it.
