MozzartBet Kenya is fighting for its survival with the kind of desperation that only comes when the walls are closing in. While the company splashes sponsorship money across grassroots football tournaments in counties and collects glossy “Best Online Casino” awards, insiders say its real strategy is far darker. According to sources deep inside its operational circles, MozzartBet has earmarked close to Sh100 million to influence the newly formed Gambling Regulatory Authority board and its chairman ahead of the June 30 license renewal deadline.
The move is a brazen attempt at regulatory capture. The company’s directors know the new Gambling Control Act, signed by President Ruto in August 2025, handed the GRA sharp teeth: powers to inspect premises and digital platforms in real time, seize equipment and data, impose heavy penalties, and revoke licenses for serious violations. Those are exactly the powers that could finish MozzartBet once and for all.
The judicial record leaves little room for argument. In May 2025 the Court of Appeal, sitting as Justices Francis Toiyott, Fred Ochieng and Aggrey Muchelule, upheld the High Court’s earlier decision and ordered the forfeiture of Sh256 million plus as proceeds of crime. The judges were blunt. They described Kimaco Connections Limited, the entity MozzartBet claimed to have paid for betting software, as a shell company with no meaningful capacity, no staff, no expertise and nil tax returns filed with the Kenya Revenue Authority. Large sums, sometimes Sh50 million in a single day, flowed from MozzartBet’s paybill number 290059 to Kimaco in a matter of days. The court noted the money then moved onward through another entity, Pescom Kenya, and into the personal accounts of MozzartBet directors under highly suspicious circumstances.
Those directors include former Member of Parliament Musa Cherutich Sirma, Branimir Melentijevic and Emmanuel Charumbira. The judges used the famous duck test in their ruling: if it walks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. MozzartBet, they concluded, had failed to give any satisfactory explanation for why colossal sums ended up in accounts linked to the betting firm and its directors. A letter from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations that the company tried to hide behind was dismissed by the High Court as nothing more than a decoy.
Now the same firm that lost at every level of the Kenyan judiciary is allegedly preparing to buy its way past the one institution still standing between it and continued operation. The timing is no accident. The GRA is newly constituted. Its board is freshly appointed. Its institutional culture is still forming. MozzartBet’s calculation, sources say, is that this narrow window before June 30 offers the best chance to neutralise the threat through financial inducements rather than through any genuine compliance or accountability.
Alongside the alleged approach to the regulator, the company has been working another angle. Reporters who have pursued the story describe sustained pressure and attempts to place financial arrangements with individual journalists and publications to discourage or kill further investigation. The dual strategy is clear: buy the regulator if possible, silence the media if necessary, and keep the public relations machine running at full tilt with football sponsorships and community projects designed to manufacture goodwill.
The contrast is grotesque. MozzartBet has already been found by Kenyan courts to have operated on the proceeds of crime. It used elaborate layering through shell companies and mobile money to evade basic Central Bank prudential requirements. Some of that money reached the pockets of its own directors. Instead of accepting the verdict and winding down, the company is doubling down with an alleged bribery plot and a charm offensive aimed at ordinary Kenyans and politicians alike.
Kenya’s position on the FATF grey list makes the stakes even higher. The country is still under increased monitoring precisely because of weaknesses in its anti-money laundering framework. Every month that a betting operator whose funds have been judicially declared proceeds of crime retains a licence sends a signal that enforcement remains optional for those with deep pockets and connections. The GRA was created to change that script. Its first major test arrives on June 30.
Sources who have spoken about the Sh100 million plot are taking real risks. MozzartBet has shown it does not treat legal accountability as a serious constraint. It has laundered hundreds of millions, lost in court, lost again on appeal, and now appears ready to test whether the new regulator can be purchased the same way previous obstacles were allegedly managed.
The question hanging over the GRA is simple and brutal. Will it enforce the law that already exists on paper, the one that says a company convicted of handling proceeds of crime does not meet the threshold for a licence? Or will it allow itself to be captured before it has even found its feet? MozzartBet is betting heavily, in every sense, that the answer will favour survival over principle. The rest of Kenya, and the country’s international credibility on financial crime, will pay the price if that bet succeeds.
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