Glee Hotel, a luxury property located along Nairobi’s Northern Bypass, could be auctioned after a lender moved to recover debts amounting to at least KSh8.267 billion linked to its owner, businesswoman Mary Wambui Mungai.
A valuation report commissioned by the bank places the 211-room hotel’s open market value at about KSh9.5 billion, broken down into KSh1 billion for the land, KSh6.5 billion for the buildings, and KSh2 billion for fixtures and fittings.
The report further indicates that the hotel has an insurance value of KSh8.5 billion. However, in the event of a forced sale through auction, the property is expected to fetch approximately KSh5.625 billion, representing about 59 per cent of its market value.
Court and banking records show that the loans were advanced over several years beginning in 2020, at least three years after construction of the hotel had already commenced.
In her defence, Ms. Wambui has attributed her loan defaults to the freezing of bank accounts belonging to her companies, following a government decision to halt payments for rice supplied to the Kenya National Trading Corporation (KNTC) between 2022 and 2023.
The lender, however, maintains that Ms. Wambui has failed to submit any repayment proposals or meaningfully engage in negotiations since the defaults began in February 2025. The bank says it issued statutory notices granting a 40-day period for settlement of the outstanding amounts, after which it would be entitled to proceed with the auction.
Although the notice period elapsed, the bank says it temporarily suspended the auction process to allow for discussions, on condition that a repayment agreement be concluded before the end of 2025.
Ms. Wambui has further argued that her companies are currently unable to access additional credit facilities, limiting their ability to execute other contracts that would have generated funds to service the loans.
She has also accused the lender of selectively targeting Glee Hotel for auction while allegedly ignoring other assets provided by guarantors.
In response, the bank insists that it is legally entitled to determine which secured assets to realise in order to recover the outstanding debt.
