An Insider’s Account of How Safaricom Aided in Disinheriting of Pevans of its Shares in Sportpesa onto Milestones

For years, Sportpesa — operated by Pevans East Africa Limited — was one of Kenya’s most recognisable brands, at one point ranked among the country’s most profitable companies and the second-most popular brand behind Safaricom itself.

Its licence was suspended by the Betting Control and Licensing Board (BCLB) in July 2019 amid tax disputes with the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), reportedly running into the tens of billions of shillings.

What followed, according to a detailed document seen by ‘Business Report’, was the systematic transfer of Pevans’ entire operating infrastructure — brand name, paybills, short codes, customer database, staff, and premises — to a newly formed company, Milestone Games Limited, without Milestone paying for any of it.

Central to how that transfer became operationally possible was Safaricom PLC.

The Paybill Transfer: Pevans operated two M-Pesa paybill numbers — 955100 and 955700 — through which the vast majority of Sportpesa’s betting transactions flowed. The document alleges these paybills, along with associated short codes and USSD access, were transferred and activated for Milestone Games on 30 October 2020.

The dossier raises several specific, checkable claims about the circumstances of that transfer:

1. An active court preservation order. On 20 August 2020, KRA obtained preservation orders over Pevans’ bank accounts and the two paybills in question, through High Court Miscellaneous Case No. 025 of 2020. Those orders remained in force until 5 December 2020 — meaning they were live on the date Safaricom is alleged to have activated the paybills for Milestone.

2. Pending litigation involving Safaricom itself: Pevans/Sportpesa had an active case against BCLB the predecessor of the Gambling Regulatory Authority (GRA), Safaricom, and others (Court of Appeal No. 471 of 2020) over its original licence dispute. Safaricom had filed submissions in that case — meaning, if accurate, Safaricom was simultaneously a litigant against Sportpesa’s interests and the entity facilitating Milestone’s takeover of Sportpesa’s infrastructure.

3. Regulatory approval allegedly bypassed. Under the account, transferring paybills and short codes for a gaming operator requires prior clearance from the Communications Authority of Kenya and the then gaming regulator (BCLB) — clearances the letter says were never obtained before Safaricom activated the numbers for Milestone.

4. Unusual speed: Safaricom activated the Milestone paybills within roughly a day of application, contrasted with an alleged two-week standard turnaround for other operators.

5. A contrasting case: Bharti Airtel’s refusal. Airtel Kenya — which held related Sportpesa short codes — declined to transfer them to Milestone, citing legal requirements. This is presented as evidence that compliance was a choice available to operators, and that Safaricom chose differently.

The Karungaru Letter: A supporting document referenced in the account is a letter and affidavit from Wilson Karungaru, the sole natural-person director of Milestone Games at the time.

In it, Karungaru reportedly states he applied to Safaricom on Milestone’s behalf on 29 October 2020 for the paybill transfer, which the letter says was activated the following day — 30 October 2020. It also expresses unease about funds being “disbursed to strange entities… unknown to me,” a claim framed as evidence of possible money-laundering concerns even from within Milestone’s own leadership.m

Karungaru later resigned as director citing lack of visibility into how the company was actually run.

The Licence Question in 2021/2022: Beyond the original paybill transfer, a second phase of irregularity: that Milestone continued operating and advertising as a licensed BCLB operator through 2021/2022 under Licence No. 000205 — a licence that, per a BCLB letter to mobile network operators dated 31 July 2022, had by then actually been issued to a different company, Hardwick Limited, trading as Bollywood Casino.

If accurate, this would mean Safaricom continued to platform Milestone’s betting and jackpot services on its network for a period during which Milestone held no valid gaming licence — something the dossier argues should have been visible to Safaricom through routine compliance checks, particularly given the volume of prior litigation between the two companies’ predecessor entities.

Why the dossier says Safaricom “Knew”: The central argument is not that Safaricom acted in ignorance, but that it had every reason to know the individuals behind Milestone were the same people who ran Pevans. It points to:

(a) Ronald Karauri and Francis Kiarie holding roles as both Pevans directors and undisclosed majority beneficial owners of Milestone through a holding structure (Selinium Limited).

(b) A Pevans company secretary, described as also serving as Milestone’s legal officer, who had filed numerous prior cases against Safaricom on behalf of Sportpesa-linked entities — meaning that individual was well known within Safaricom’s legal department.

(c) More than a decade of litigation between Sportpesa-related entities and Safaricom prior to 2020, which the letter uses to argue that ignorance of the ownership overlap is not a plausible explanation.

What This Means, and What’s Missing: If the sequence described in the letter is accurate, it would raise substantive regulatory questions: whether a licensed telco activated financial infrastructure in defiance of a live court order, whether it bypassed statutory approval processes for a gaming operator, and whether it continued to platform an unlicensed betting operation for an extended period.

But it is important to be precise about what exists here and what doesn’t:

(a) No court finding establishes that Safaricom acted unlawfully in the paybill transfer.

(b) No regulatory sanction against Safaricom over this matter is referenced in the dossier or independently confirmed