Top Lawyer Faces Criminal Probe in Brazen SportPesa Forgery Scandal

Karauri’s Camp Accused of Manufacturing Court Documents to Eliminate Business Rival

A senior advocate is staring at possible criminal prosecution after investigators uncovered a sophisticated forgery scheme designed to eliminate a key shareholder from the high-stakes battle for control of the SportPesa betting empire.

The Directorate of Criminal Investigations has opened file OB 23/08/09/2025 targeting the prominent lawyer who allegedly doctored a High Court order to permanently bar businessman Paul Wanderi Ndung’u from protecting his multi-billion shilling stake in Pevans East Africa, the original owners of the SportPesa brand.

The scam, now exposed by the Court of Appeal, involved transforming a routine two-week interim injunction issued on January 12, 2023, into a fabricated permanent restraining order.

The fake document was then strategically filed at the Court of Appeal, successfully deceiving three appellate judges into blocking Ndung’u from crucial litigation over the SportPesa trademark.

The Forged Order

Court records reveal the authentic High Court order merely restrained Ndung’u from dealing in Pevans East Africa affairs for fourteen days ending January 24, 2023.

However, the manufactured version presented to the appellate court bore “different wordings” suggesting a perpetual injunction had been granted.

The forgery proved devastatingly effective.

On February 11, 2023, Justices Daniel Musinga, Mumbi Ngugi and George Odunga unwittingly relied on the fraudulent document to dismiss Ndung’u’s application to join litigation challenging a controversial consent between Milestone Games and the Betting Control and Licensing Board.

Paul Wanderi Ndung’u

It took nearly two years before the same bench discovered they had been duped.

In their recent ruling reversing the 2023 decision, the judges noted pointedly that “the said orders were interim in nature and lapsed by operation of the law as they had not been extended.”

More damning was their observation that Milestone Games—the vehicle through which SportPesa CEO Ronald Karauri and his allies have seized control of the betting brand—never challenged Ndung’u’s claim that the order had expired. The silence speaks volumes.

Karauri’s Fingerprints

While the lawyer under investigation remains unnamed pending formal charges, the timing and beneficiaries of the forgery paint a clear picture.

The fake order emerged precisely when Karauri and his co-directors at Milestone Games were desperately trying to cement their control over the SportPesa brand while permanently sidelining Ndung’u and fellow shareholder Asenath Wachera Maina.

The consent agreement that Ndung’u sought to challenge and which the forged order prevented him from contesting was itself deeply suspect.

Five out of seven BCLB directors disowned the deal and rejected claims they had approved Milestone’s use of the SportPesa trademark.

The manufactured court order conveniently eliminated the most vocal opponent just as this questionable consent was being pushed through the courts. Coincidence? Hardly.

Karauri and Robert Macharia, who held merely three percent in the original Pevans company, now control Milestone Games with 71 percent and 14 percent stakes respectively.

They’ve effectively hijacked a brand that generated dividends totaling Sh7.6 billion in just four and half years to June 2019.

Corporate Theft Wrapped in Legal Procedure

Ndung’u and Maina, who held 17 percent and 21 percent stakes respectively in Pevans, now face being forced out without compensation. Ndung’u’s shareholding has been diluted from 17 percent to a paltry 0.8 percent through what he terms “an irregular dilution scheme.”

The coup began in October 2022 with a general meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where a special resolution was passed to expel Ndung’u and Maina. When the expelled shareholders attempted to fight back through the courts, they were met with the forged injunction.

The playbook is clear: expel inconvenient shareholders, manufacture legal documents to silence them, then use compliant lawyers and questionable consent agreements to legitimize the corporate theft.

Questions Mount

Who instructed the lawyer to forge the court order? Who drafted the fake document? Who filed it at the Court of Appeal? And most critically—who paid for these services?

The lawyer under investigation didn’t act in a vacuum. Legal forgery of this sophistication requires detailed instructions from a client with both motive and means.

Karauri and his directors at Milestone sought court orders stopping Ndung’u and Maina from filing cases on behalf of the company, claiming they had been expelled and lacked authority.

When legitimate court processes proved insufficient, did they resort to forgery?

Pevans’ operations remain dormant while its assets continue to be used by Milestone Games—a corporate corpse being stripped of valuable organs while the rightful heirs are locked out by forged court orders.

The Reckoning

The Court of Appeal’s scathing reversal has blown open what may be one of Kenya’s most brazen cases of judicial fraud in a commercial dispute.

The three appellate judges made clear that Ndung’u’s “alleged expulsion as a shareholder of Pevans is one that requires proper interrogation”—interrogation that was deliberately prevented by the forged order.

For Karauri, the unraveling forgery scandal threatens to expose the questionable foundations upon which Milestone’s control of SportPesa rests.

Multiple consent agreements, dubious shareholder expulsions, and now criminal forgery—this is the murky legal swamp from which his betting empire has emerged.

The senior lawyer facing investigation should prepare for more than professional embarrassment. Manufacturing court orders strikes at the heart of judicial integrity.

The Law Society of Kenya will certainly want answers. So will the courts that were deceived.

But the bigger question remains: who gave the orders? In whose interest was this brazen forgery committed? The DCI investigation file OB 23/08/09/2025 may yet reveal that the lawyer was merely the scribe for a darker conspiracy to steal a multi-billion shilling business empire.

For now, both Karauri and his unnamed legal accomplice must be sweating as investigators close in.

The forged order that seemed so clever in 2023 has become a ticking time bomb in 2025—one that threatens to blow up not just legal careers, but the entire edifice of Milestone’s questionable claim to the SportPesa brand.

Justice, as they say, may be slow. But forgery leaves a paper trail that doesn’t disappear.