Even minister in the Sh100m puzzle could evade KACC

By Kipkoech Tanui

So after a Cabinet meeting chaired by President Kibaki, a minister has a date with anti-graft investigators?

Yes, Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, where investigations never end, tells us this minister, has amassed a Sh100 million fortune. There is nothing on his pay slip or other known sources, at least those picked by the Kacc surveillance radar, to suggest he can be worth that much in so short a time.

They will have looked at his pay slip and found it compares badly with Justice Aaron Ringera’s Sh2.5 million a month. If they are seasoned investigators whose files Attorney General Amos Wako cannot return to sender, they will have checked out if this VIP suspect has an offshore or local empire building loans.

So where does this take us? Either there are pickpockets in the Cabinet, or Ringera’s team is again handing us a red herring.

In the report Kenya Anti-Corruption Advisory Board chairman, our grand old man Mr Allan Ngugi, accuses Kenyans of having "sky-high" ambitions. It’s as if we can wait for Kacc’s date with Anglo Leasing "ghosts" in 2012. This is awful, coming after the season of shame lists and name-calling, the period the "suspects" played ping-pong with the wielders of the sword of justice, at public rallies.

One can just hope Ringera’s team isn’t doing what it knows best – playing to the public gallery, following the agenda the media set and common place talk. Because "suspicion" is not enough, the grand thieves are not known for "conspicuous consumption". They are smooth operators, hiding behind dummy companies and a network of trustee-run consortiums.

The report has its icing too: a court clerk worth over Sh100 million, but who could be earning Sh20,000 a month, is under investigation. Kacc is also on the trail of many others, including a fabulously rich former minister.

Allan says: "The commission has faced many challenges. Key among them is the existing sky-high public expectation that corruption should be eliminated at once. This expectation has coexisted side-by-side with the factual situation that the commission is a young institution, only set up three years ago…" That, Kacc for which we’ve given our sweat and blood, even as the northerners starve because we believe is a worthy investment in terms of future savings, is just but a toothless baby! Kacc needs culling because it never grows.

Again according Allan’s wisdom, the man who is supposed to appraise Ringera and demand results, the enemy of graft war is the Press: "While media attention and interest on matters under the mandate of the commission has been unstintingly high, there has been, in the opinion of the Advisory Board, a tendency towards disparaging the commission’s efforts rather than towards institution-building through constructive criticism.’’

The thinking is flawed, first Kacc isn’t immune to criticism, it is burning our money daily, and so like any paymaster, Kenyans expect results. The pressure on the media to execute its watchdog duties is as much as their demand on Kacc to hang one thief in public.

Again, it is like the media didn’t blow the cover on Anglo leasing-type cases, forcing resignations of ministers and even goading Ringera to begin talking about it.

What has Mzee Allan got to say of the fact that Kenyans today have for a Vice- President a man under whose nose the scandalous Anglo Leasing passport contracts blossomed? Do the media and citizens have the power to force him to step aside until he’s cleared?

It’s clear from his lamentations that the board too, is hamstrung, so it is not just Justice Ringera holding the wrong end of the stick.

In the opening pages, Ringera plays his favourite disc. "On the functions of the commission, it is worth mentioning that it is often forgotten, or overlooked that the commission has no powers to prosecute criminal offences whether corruption, economic crime or anything else…"

So when he pushes files to Wako, the national prosecutor, he finds "gaps" and the papers are back to Ringera, meanwhile time ticks. Are we missing something here? Sad thing you can’t fire any of them even if their contracts lack the lines "Life AG" and "Life Kacc director".

Like PLO Lumumba would argue, Allan and Aaron are chasing mosquitoes with a hammer. With Ngugi’s board, Kacc is but a giant standing on a mosquito’s feet. The circus is bound to continue, Kenyans will then be taught lessons, on patience by Ringera, even as the dragon he vowed he would slay, continues snorting and running amok.

The media will remain the punching bag, and the political exigencies of the time will reign supreme.

Now that ODM-Kenya is about to hit the road, after Ramadhan’s lull, you are bound to hear fresh declarations the war is on and there will be no sacred cows. But Ringera argues he’s an achiever - there are 190 corruption cases before courts today. Much as he dislikes it, the majority must be "small fishes" squirming in the frying pan as the high and mighty read the 450 demand notices he has sent, as they conceal their tracks. But even then court cases are nothing until they are determined, and what Kenyans want are statistics on convictions, not "cases on various stages of hearing.’’ They’ve heard that song for far too long. May be courts are slow, or the corrupt can buy the best lawyers in town, but surely a watertight investigation file is a conviction unto itself. Not many "big fishes" can wriggle out of its nets and fangs.

Ringera’s idea of war-plan: public sensitisation through sponsorship of agricultural shows, preaching missions to public servants and evangelic meetings in the villages! In the report he again declares: corruption is an international plague and affliction.

This race is indeed getting hilarious, when you think it has ended, it begins!