Kenyan sports betting operator SportPesa’s botched return to its home market continues to go off the rails as in-fighting among key stakeholders injects further doubts as to the operator’s local future.

This week, SportPesa shareholder Paul Wanderi Ndung’u went public with a statement accusing SportPesa CEO Ronald Karauri and the company’s international investors of attempting to ‘hollow out’ the company at the expense of Kenyan stakeholders.

Wanderi, who until last December chaired the operator’s Kenya-based parent company Pevans East Africa Ltd, said he and other key local stakeholders were entirely unaware of SportPesa’s plans to restart its Kenyan operations last Friday under a new betting license issued to Milestone Games Ltd.

Those plans also took Kenya’s Betting Control & Licensing Board (BCLB) by surprise, as the regulator ordered the new SportPesa to halt operations the same day. The BCLB noted that Pevans East Africa had appealed the 2019 revocation of SportPesa’s local license and the SportPesa brand wouldn’t be eligible to operate in Kenya until this dispute was resolved.