Former Kenyan Leader Should Face Corruption Inquiry, Says Report

Kenya’s former president Daniel arap Moi should face an investigation over the country’s single biggest corruption scandal, according to leaked findings of an official inquiry.

The inquiry is also said to recommend that a serving minister in the present Kenyan government faces criminal charges. The scandal centers on the theft of £400m in public money paid as state subsidies to a company named Goldenberg International to promote gold and diamond exports, even though Kenya has hardly any gold or diamonds.

The "Goldenberg affair" has been overshadowed by subsequent scandals involving the government of the current president, Mwai Kibaki, but it remains the single biggest fraud perpetrated in Kenya.

The report, leaked to the Reuters news agency, is believed to say that George Saitoti, who was finance minister in the Moi government, should face "appropriate criminal charges". Mr Saitoti, 62, a former maths professor who is now education minister, has been dogged by allegations of complicity in the scam, which he denies.

The inquiry, led by an appeal court judge, Samuel Bosire, also said it doubted whether Mr Moi, 81, could have been "completely unaware" of the fraud as head of state. Kamlesh Pattni, who was a director of Goldenberg International, told the inquiry he had taken suitcases stuffed with banknotes to Mr Moi as his share of the profits.

The former president was the target of popular derision after he lost the 2002 elections; at the inauguration of Mr Kibaki, Mr Moi’s car was pelted with mud. But he has subsequently acquired a veneer of respect for the discipline he exercised over his cabinet, compared with the open feuding of the new government.

Mr Moi’s lawyer, Mutula Kilonzo, said the report cleared the former president. "They have not found him to have participated in any criminal activity.

"He may have made political mistakes. He may have led his minister of finance to mismanage the economy. [But] I’m not aware of any law he broke, and Judge Bosire would have said so if he found it."

Corruption was so rampant under the Moi government that the IMF and World Bank stopped lending to Kenya. His defeat in the 2002 election was a protest vote against sleaze, autocratic rule and economic failures.

The report into the Goldenberg affair was given to Mr Kibaki yesterday, at a time when the government is under pressure over another corruption case, the "Anglo Leasing" scandal which began under Mr Moi’s rule and was allegedly reactivated and extended under the new government.

The finance minister, David Mwiraria, resigned on Wednesday, saying he had been wrongly accused of involvement in Anglo Leasing and was stepping aside to clear his name. The scandal involved contracts worth £50m for a passport computer system and forensic lab that were to be financed by a bogus company.

Backstory

The Goldenberg fraud took place between 1990 and 1993. It centers on Goldenberg International, a gemstone company run by Kamlesh Pattni, which received subsidy payments for exports of gold and diamonds that never took place. According to Mr Pattni’s testimony, the plan had been to export precious minerals coming into Kenya from third countries. He alleged that the former president Daniel arap Moi saw this as a useful way to earn foreign currency. When Mwai Kibaki was elected president he set up a judicial inquiry.