Unclaimed assets agency hit with safe deposit boxes jam

UFAA chief executive officer John Mwangi. FILE PHOTO | NMG 

By EDWIN MUTAI
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Summary

• UFAA boss John Mwangi told MPs that the content of the 962 safe deposit boxes was unknown since the authority had not broken them due to legal and logistical challenges.
• But they are believed to contain jewellery, title deeds, share certificates and Treasury bills whose value could be revealed later.

The Unclaimed Financial Assets Authority (UFAA) has no capacity to store 962 safe deposit boxes that financial institutions have reported to it, even as the total value of unclaimed assets hit Sh25.2 billion in the year to June 2017.

UFAA chief executive John Mwangi told Members of Parliament that the content of the 962 safe deposit boxes was unknown since the authority had not broken them due to legal and logistical challenges.

But they are believed to contain jewellery, title deeds, share certificates and Treasury bills whose value could be revealed later.

“These boxes have been reported to us by financial institutions but we have not received the 962 safe boxes. We do not have a strong room to store the boxes but we have asked the financial institutions to keep them under our orders,” Mr Mwangi told the National Assembly’s Special Funds Accounts committee.

Barclays Bank, now renamed Absa, holds the bulk of the safe deposit boxes at 854, Standard Chartered Bank (80), Gurdian Bank (15), Habib AG Zurich (8) Guaranty Trust Bank (3) and Eco Bank (2).

Mr Mwangi told the parliamentary committee that the authority also faced legal challenges handling the safe deposit boxes. He said the UFAA law does not provide how assets other than cash and jewellery found in the safe boxes will be handled.

“Our legal mandate is exclusive to cash or near cash … unless the UFAA law is changed for us to go for assets like title deeds,” Mr Mwangi said.

“We are working a comprehensive national policy following operationalisation of UFAA Act to guide legal and policy changes that may be proposed in entrenching unclaimed assets regimes for socio-economic development and posterity.”

Although neither UFAA nor the financial institutions know the contents of the safe deposit boxes, it is public knowledge that wealthy families store precious jewellery, share certificates, Treasury bills, company certificates and personal documents such as land title deeds, security certificates, and share certificates in banks.