Leonard Mwithiga: Who is the Kenyan banker arrested for seeking a hitman to eliminate female family member?

Mwithiga, 52, was presented before a court on Wednesday to testify against the accusations where it was learnt that from September 9 to December 1, 2023, he requested help from an Uber driver to connect him to a hitman. 

Court documents reveal that Mwithiga wanted the hitman to “put that woman down” and “finish her,” in reference to the alleged female family member as reported by US-based media outlet NBC.

Muthiga was reported to have suggested that the woman could also be injected with something to make her sick “like a cancer.”

His plot however hit a dead end when he met a policeman who was posing as a hitman at a hotel in Putnam, Motel 6, where they agreed to the hit job planning for the family member to ingest fentanyl and make it look like an overdose.

Mwithiga is also said to have told the undercover cop that he wanted the homicide to occur when he was in Kenya between January 28 and February 3, 2024, so he wouldn’t be a suspect.

This then led to his arrest on Monday.

His defence team maintained Mathiga's innocence and that he travelled to Connecticut to settle some court proceedings and was planning to head to Kenya on December 7, 2023.

The court set the bond at Ksh.766.5 million (5 million dollars) and if he bonds out, he will be required to be on a 24/7 GPS lockdown, surrender his passport and be forced to stay in the state.

The case is set to be mentioned on January 26, 2024, as the suspect will be facing several charges; criminal attempt/intimidation of a witness, conspiracy to commit murder and criminal attempt and murder with special circumstances

Citizen Digital has dug deeper at Mwithiga and established that he has had a cumulative 20-year professional career with 14 of them in senior management of the banking and financial services industry.

On his LinkedIn profile, he describes himself as a "passionate, experienced and transformational professional" with expansive experience in banking operations, technology, Innovation and strategic change management.

Mwithiga attained his Ph.D. in Business Administration in 2017 from the University of Nairobi (UoN) where he specialised in Strategic Information and Banking industry.

This was after attaining his Master of Business Administration in 2002 from the same institution.

In 1995, Mwithiga attained his bachelor's degree in Physics and Mathematics from Egerton University.

Between 2003 and 2006, Mwithiga worked as the Head of IT at Central Depository and Settlement Corporation before heading to Barclays Africa Group Limited as the head of change and performance at the COO's office. He served there for 7 years.

In 2013, he moved to Equity Bank as the General Manager of Group Shared Services, in Group COO's Office, and served in the position for 6 months.

A call from Chase Bank Kenya promoted a move where he worked as the Service Delivery and IT director up to 2015.

He joined KCB Bank in 2016, starting as the Group Director for IT in the office of the group COO then was promoted in 2019 to be the ICT Executive Director of the National Bank, a subsidiary of KCB.

At the start of 2021 he was promoted to serve as the Group Shared Services Director where he has since served. Some sources however say that he left the position a few months ago under Voluntary Early Retirement.