Government encourages whistle-blowers to give evidence on stolen wealth

As part of the Kenyan government's efforts to regain vast wealth stolen by corrupt officials and politicians, it is encouraging "whistle blowers" to come forward with information, Assistant Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Robinson Githae, told a conference on Friday. He said people giving evidence would receive "protection" and that they should approach either the Ministry of Justice, the Attorney General or the Anti-Corruption police directly. Kenya was focusing on the "Philippine method" of asset recovery, said Githae, which involved seeking redress through the courts. This method was slow, he said, and the danger remained that the accused would hire "top lawyers" to delay the process in the courts, as they had done for 10 years in the Goldenberg "circus" - Kenya's most infamous scam in which millions of dollars were looted through an export compensation scheme. On a positive note, the government would be availing itself of expertise in the form of forensic auditors to chase money trails as well as international law firms which specialise in the recovery of assets, he said. Under current legislation - the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act - the government could apply to have illegal assets forfeited, Githae said. People could also come forward and volunteer to return assets or money they had stolen, but there would be no amnesties granted, he added. "We don't want to be seen to be condoning corruption." The National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) government has promised there will be no "sacred cows" and that all corrupt officials - whether within NARC or from the previous Kenya African Nationalist Union (KANU) government - will be targeted by anti-corruption laws. But analysts say it is not doing enough to tackle corruption within its own ranks because many of its members were part of the old regime. Opposition Member of Parliament Paul Muite emphasised that the government must pursue its own members as well as those in KANU. He said he was also concerned that the government wanted to limit its investigations to money that had been stashed abroad instead of looking closer to home. Adan Mohamed, managing director of Barclays Bank told the conference that Kenyan banking laws needed to be reformed and developed, as banks were governed by the legislation and governments of the countries they operated in. He said the regulators in Kenya, the Central Bank of Kenya, had to take action against those whom they suspected of engaging in illegal practices. The secretary of the Law Society of Kenya, George Kegoro, has pointed out a number of other weaknesses in the Kenyan legal framework: under current legislation only officials who are still in public office have to declare their wealth and therefore come under scrutiny; there is no obvious mechanism for the recovery of stolen wealth; and anti-money laundering legislation needs to be passed. "Unfortunately we do not have the required legal framework. The challenge is to develop one," he said in an article published this week by Transparency International. Githae told the conferenc at least 240 billion ksh (over US $3 billion) of stolen money and assets were estimated to have been chanelled out of Kenya, which would amount to over 600 billion if interests and penalties were included. "If this kind of money came back to Kenya, it would give Kenyans a tax holiday for one year because 240 billion is what we collect from revenues in a year." Referring to the massive "haemorrhage of wealth" stolen from Kenya, Gladwell Otieno of Transparency International said: "People are amazed that we actually possessed that much".