Caroline Mutoko’s Illicit Love Affair With Chase Bank Should Make Us Worried. Very Worried.

Caroline Mutoko is a brand. Good. A brand that,more often than not,gets paid to push a product,start a narrative,initiate a school of thought,influence society and even,in extreme cases,defend her corporate interests.

That’s what brands do. Kendall Jenner gets paid insane tons of dollars for posting a sultry photo of herself dressed in Calvin Kleins. And sure,Nash Grier,the most powerful personality on Vine,at only eighteen years old,makes massive amounts of dough whenever he mentions or pushes brands like Virgin Mobile and Sonic.

There is absolutely NOTHING wrong to push a particular brand or organization fervently,especially if you’re pocketing dough at the end of the day.

Trouble is,what sort of brand are you pushing? And are you at the right side of history?

Prior to the ignominious collapse of Chase Bank,a bank that prided itself as the hub of the elite and the well-to-do,Caroline Ndinda Mutoko had been their advertiser.

She had,not once or twice,heavily promoted the Chase Bank brand and painted it in the most colorful of colors as the ultimate Bank in Kenya. Obviously,Miss Mutoko had been paid by the Bank to do the dirty work for them.

But while the the Bank’s sales and marketing team were busy recruiting powerful radio figures to push them,the guys sitting in the boardroom were busy siphoning out billions of Kenya Shillings to themselves,in unsecured loans that they had no intention or road map of paying back. Ever.

It was one of the most obscene corporate thuggeries of all time.

More than 50,000 depositors with nearly Sh100 billion in Chase Bank and 1,400 employees were financially ruined after the bank was brought down by fraudulent transactions of the institution’s pugnacious Ferrari-driving officials.

The same Bank that Caroline Mutoko would be singing endless praises of would end up being the bank that was actually not the sweetheart it had been relentlessly marketed out as.

And soon enough,it’s collapse was inevitable. The swindlers would thereafter go missing,with billions of shillings treacherously loaned out to themselves,money that belonged to other people.

But Caroline wouldn’t cut ties with such an unscrupulous bank. Not so soon. Not when she had so much to lose.

Even when the bank was mired in one of the ugliest scandals of all time,Caroline still stood by it and by extension,by it’s shadiness and unethical activities.

The good radio Queen never found it in herself to rebuke the Bank’s directors and castigate them for being such a cabal of dishonorable,machiavellian individuals.

The woman who has been severally named as one of the most powerful people in Kenya clearly didn’t find anything absolutely wrong with the Bank’s operations and the fact that they blatantly robbed their own depositors.

She stuck by the goons and even composed a whole new chorus on Facebook singing,‪#‎IStandWithChaseBank‬.

That such an influential figure,who gets invited to speak to girls and women about independence and strength and morality would NOT rebuke an institution she has worked for,for fleecing Kenyans and leading thousands of people into panic,was the most shocking thing.

Caroline,it seemed,saw nothing wrong with the deceitful ways of the Bank’s former honchos. She still sang the Bank’s praise and still pushed the Bank’s message,even when it was knee-deep in the messiest financial scandal we’ve witnessed yet.

Caroline even formed a formidable social media army to sing Chase Bank’s void praises all through and would then share their little experiences with her Facebook audience.

In fact,last night,Caroline shared one of the Facebook posts of yet another woman defending Chase Bank and declaring her unending love for the bank but that post is now curiously missing from her timeline.

I don’t know what kind of sorcery is this but clearly,it’s not the good kind.

Unapologetic and undaunted,Caroline chose to stand by a gang of corporate thugs and crafty,piggish individuals.

And then a former Chase Bank depositer Florence Kamaitha did a little article that was published on HapaKenya.com detailing her unending romance with Chase Bank. Quickly,Caroline Mutoko shared that blog post. And,expectedly,it went viral.

What most of the former Chase Bank’s depositors cited as their reason to still remain chained to Chase Bank was the fact that,at Chase Bank,they were treated with care,they were loved,they were told they were loved,they would be called and wished Happy Birthday and more of such nonsense.

These Chase Bank loyalists are not giving us sound reasons for still sticking with Chase Bank…They are not telling us of the fact that,at Chase Bank,you can get better loan rates,your money is more secure,there’s a better atmosphere for banking and such complex issues.

All you can hear them say is,’At Chase Bank,I used to feel loved and wanted’. Oh please. As if Banks are now meant to double up as cute,pet dogs.

Caroline Mutoko now wants us to stick with a Bank that is robbing us,a bank that plunges us to financial disarray,a bank whose directors are playing hide and seek with our billions simply because the customer care girls are sweet and lovely.

Caroline Mutoko wants me to buy the stupid #IStandWithChaseBank narrative simply because,at Chase Bank, they would send you flowers over on Valentine’s Day, they would quickly pick my call of distress,they would smile at me and tell me I looked good today and that they were so very adorable.

What utter bullshit!

I want a bank that makes me feel safe,a bank that won’t play with my millions,a bank that values my hard-earned cash,a bank that understands that if I lost my money I would probably lose my life and a bank that is not stupid enough to fleece itself dry with over 50% of it’s deposits loaned out amongst the directors.

I don’t care about a bank that tells me that I smell good. Or that I have a nice shirt. I have my wife for that.

F**k a bank that sounds sweet to me on the phone and proceeds to siphon my millions out of my account.

I ain’t a three year old. I don’t need to be pampered and sweet talked. It’s a bank. Not a goddam Luther Vandross concert.

But Caroline Mutoko and her team of sentimental women have sustained that particular narrative. They want you to look beyond the fact that YOUR money was robbed and start reminiscing about the good old days and how charming the Customer Care dudes were.

Institutions are NOT run on sentimentalism.

Fraud is fraud. Doesn’t matter how kind the thug was.

Caroline has totally missed the point. And is sadly on the very wrong side of history as we speak right now.

It’s a shame that she would be so fervent in glorifying a bank that almost led people to suicide and irreparable financial ruin. But when you’re accustomed to sleeping with the devil,it’s hard to criticize his thorny tail.

It’s deplorable.

To properly understand me,read this article titled Banks Suffering Under Misleadership that was first published by the Daily Nation and you will see what I am riled up about.

Unfortunately, Caroline is a very influential media figure and we all know how powerful she is and how easy it is for her to drive a narrative home no matter how incredulous it is.

But her illicit romance with the Bank has to end.

Either that or she was very heavily involved in the grand heist that was carried out by the directors. And actually benefited from some of the hefty,unsecured loans that were mannerlessly dished out across the table.

When women of Mutoko’s social standing suddenly start siding with crooks and felons,it’s time to be afraid. Very afraid.

Sickening.