Leaked: Report alleges Kenya's Former President looted billions

Republished from Kenya Imagine
Friday 31st August 2007

Former Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi declared that he would back incumbent Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki for a second term in the upcoming Kenyan General Elections later in the year. The news of the union of souls has been met with responses coming in at acres of newsprint and millions of gigabytes dedicated to suggesting various motives and calculations that would bring the two erstwhile foes together. It is with interest therefore that we read in today's Guardian of the findings of a leaked report commissioned by the government of Kenya into corruption and the Moi family.

The article published here in today's Guardian under the title The Looting of Kenya - The breathtaking extent of corruption perpetrated by the family of the former Kenyan leader Daniel Arap Moi was exposed last night in a secret report that laid bare a web of shell companies, secret trusts and frontmen that his entourage used to funnel hundreds of millions of pounds into nearly 30 countries including Britain.
The 110-page report by the international risk consultancy Kroll, seen by the Guardian, alleges that relatives and associates of Mr Moi siphoned off more than £1bn of government money. If true, it would put the Mois on a par with Africa's other great kleptocrats, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) and Nigeria's Sani Abacha.


The assets accumulated included multimillion pound properties in London, New York and South Africa, as well as a 10,000-hectare ranch in Australia and bank accounts containing hundreds of millions of pounds."

It is now clear that the report, submitted to the government in 2004 has been kept under wraps against the spirit of the passionate declarations of 2002.

The Guardian's Nairobi correspondent Xan Rice claims to have seen a leaked copy of this report which makes serious allegations of corruption by relatives and associates of the former president.

According to the article some of the claims made out in the report include:

* More than £1billion pounds was moved out of Kenya

* The former President's sons - Philip and Gideon - are reported to be worth £384m and £550m respectively;

* His associates were said to have acted in collusion with Italian drug barons and been involved in printing counterfeit money;

While it is true that the report which was prepared by Kroll Associates is not a decision of a court, and therefore binding, it is odd that the government, elected on an anti-corruption platform and pledging to make a clean break with the past has not previously published the report. Alfred Mutua, the Government spokesman, in response to the charge, declares that the government found the report incomplete and therefore could not release it to the public.

But now the questions, and there are many. How much did the government pay for this ‘incomplete and inaccurate' report? Are the report and the shadow it casts over the former President the motivation for this week's power pact? Is this the proverbial pound of flesh? Does the burial of the report mean that the sins of the Moi era are dead and buried? Forever?

The report was exposed due to the efforts of Wikileak , a safe haven for whistleblowers and other persons of conscience working to end corruption.