Police contest report of serious corruption

The Kenyan police and the ruling party have both rejected a new report stating that the police force is the most heavily bribed institution in Kenya, saying that it was an effort to discredit the government and its efforts to fight corruption.

The report, by the Kenya chapter of Transparency International (TI), was based on a survey of 1,164 Kenyans in six locations - Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Eldoret, Nyeri and Machakos - with responses used to estimate the magnitude, incidence and financial cost of bribery.

"Police officers exact a 'bribery tax' equivalent to Ksh [Kenya shillings] 2,670 [about US $35] on every adult urban resident a month," according to the report, entitled "Corruption in Kenya: Findings of an Urban Bribery Survey", released on Friday.

Kenyan "police officers are the most frequently bribed public officials" in the country, the report added.

The survey was used to produce a league table of bribery in various Kenyan institutions: the Kenya Urban Bribery Index. The Kenyan police force had the highest corruption rating, scoring 68.7 of a maximum score of 100 (highest possible level of bribery), ahead of the Ministry of Public Works (index score 41) and the Immigration Department (36.1).

The difference between the index score of the police and that of the next most bribed institution indicated that "bribery in the police force is much higher than in any other institution", according to Transparency International. "Bribing police officers is the most rampant practice," it added.

"I do accept that corruption exists in the force, just like in other sectors, but the few rotten apples engaged in the vice have been nabbed and charged," the Sunday Nation newspaper quoted police spokesman Peter Kimanthi as saying. "The report is aimed at besmirching government efforts to fight corruption," he added.

Deputy Police Spokesman Dola Indidis described the report as "misleading and malicious propaganda", saying that the NGO had "untransparently used an unrepresentative sample of 1,164
people from six locations to represent 30 million Kenyans," the Sunday Nation reported.

A separate report last week by Kenya's chief government pathologist which suggested that an increasing proportion of people dying of gunshot wounds in Kenya were victims of police shootings was termed innacurate and misleading by the police.

Minister of the Environment and Secretary-General of the ruling Kenya African National Union (KANU), Joseph Kamotho, said the Transparency International report was exaggerated, inauthentic and meant to discredit the government and the ruling party, the Sunday Standard newspaper reported.

"The figures mentioned were based on statistical theory and TI was using that to lie to the public about corruption," it quoted him as saying. Kamotho said TI was known to have "a soft spot" for the opposition and said it was a tool being used politically to malign the government, the report added.

The TI report had also indicated that corruption levels were high among local authorities. Mombasa Municipal Council registered a "bribery incidence" of 91.6 percent, indicating that only one in 10 people were able to obtain satisfactory service from the council without paying a bribe, the organisation stated.

In a separate report on global corruption, released in June 2001, TI rated Kenya as one of the world's most corrupt countries - ranking fifth (along with Azerbaijan, Bolivia and Cameroon) behind Bangladesh, Nigeria, Uganda and Indonesia.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2000 refused to release an estimated US $137 million in aid to Kenya because of its failure to fulfil promises on tackling corruption, and tied the resumption of funding to the re-establishment of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority (KACA).

The Kenyan parliament in August 2001 voted down a contentious Constitutional Amendment Bill aimed at paving the way for the reinstatement of KACA, with the opposition arguing that the institution created under it would be too weak to pursue its role.

Following the bill's defeat, Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi announced the creation of an anti-corruption unit within the police force, to deal with over 100 high-profile cases previously being dealt with by KACA.

According to the TI survey, however, bribery and corruption in Kenya appeared to be worsening. "The general experience of the public is that corruption is on the increase," its report stated.

Moi announced on 15 January 2002 that his government had hired a team of advisers from a UK security company, the Risk Advisory group, to investigate corruption in Kenya's official institutions and formulate a plan to eradicate it, the BBC reported.