Naivas Supermarkets Chairman Simon Gashwe Mukuha has passed on.
He suffered a stroke on Saturday and succumbed today at the Aga Khan hospital, Kenyan Business Feed has learnt.
Mr. Gashwe was among the four founders and directors of the retail firm.
According to the Naivas website, arrangements for his funeral are ongoing.
Newton Kagiri Mukuha, the eldest of three brothers at one time was fighting in court over control of supermarket chain and claimed that his siblings may have secretly sold off the company despite pending suits in Nairobi and Nakuru.
Mr Mukuha filed an application in the Milimani High Court seeking to stop his younger brothers from interfering with Naivas’ ownership structure until the protracted legal battle for control of the retail chain was determined.
The businessman said in court papers that he had been unable to ascertain from the companies’ registrar whether any changes in ownership had been effected and feared that his siblings would seal the alleged sale of the multibillion-shilling stores before he could get results from the companies’ registry.
Mr Mukuha then claimed in court through lawyer Waweru Kamuti that senior managers of Naivas had been telling staff to prepare for major changes, a move the businessman insisted is a hint at new management following the retail chain’s sale.
But the businessman’s siblings Simon Gashwe Mukuha ( Now diseased) and David Kimani Mukuha held that the application was an attempt by their elder brother to manipulate the legal process, as the issues raised were the same ones in two other applications pending ruling.
Newton Mukuha filed the case in 2013 claiming that his brothers hijacked Naivas, a family business, and excluded him from the list of shareholders despite contributing millions of shillings to set up the retail chain.
He claimed in court documents that Naivas was started in 1990 as a family business called Rongai Self Service Stores but that his two siblings incorporated it as a company three years later in their names.
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