Seventeen officials arrested in Kenya's $99m graft probe
Kenyan authorities arrested the
head of a government agency on Monday in a corruption investigation
into the theft of nearly $100 million, a rare move to hold officials to
account for graft in a nation where it is widespread.
President Uhuru Kenyatta’s pledged to stamp out graft when
he was first elected in 2013, but critics say he has been slow to pursue
top officials.
A government SUV brought Richard Ndubai,
director general of the National Youth Service, and several unidentified
people, to a police station in the Nairobi neighbourhood of Muthaiga at
midday on Monday, a Reuters witness said. All those under arrest had
their heads covered with hoods, the witness said.
Reuters could not contact Ndubai, who is in custody, for comment, and was unable to immediately contact his lawyer.
After more than a week of front-page stories in Kenyan newspapers
and numerous hashtags on Twitter, the prosecutor’s office said on
Twitter that prosecution would begin of all suspects named in a file by
the police’s criminal investigations department. Most of those names
have not been made public yet.
The director of public prosecutions, Noordin Mohamed, told Reuters
last week that his office was investigating pending bills totalling at
least 8 billion shillings ($99 million). Kenyan media reported the funds
were stolen through fictitious invoices and multiple payments on one
supplier invoice.
The director of criminal investigations, George Kinoti, told Reuters
that a total of 17 people had been arrested and would be charged
tomorrow.
The case – first reported earlier this month by the newspaper Daily
Nation — has touched a nerve, particularly on social media, where some
Kenyans are mocking the Kenyatta administration for lip service on
corruption.
Government critics say only big-name convictions will break what
they call a culture of impunity. There have been none on Kenyatta’s
watch, they say.
Many Kenyans say they believe that the amount allegedly looted by
youth service officials is a fraction of the overall amount of money
stolen annually by government officials.
The state organisation trains young people and deploys them to projects ranging from construction to traffic control.
The current scandal follows one three years ago at the same agency.
Earlier this year, a court acquitted nearly two dozen officials at the
agency after a trial over the alleged theft of 48 million shillings in
2015.
In 2016, the then-head of Kenya’s anti-graft agency said Kenya was
losing a third of its state budget – the equivalent of about $6 billion –
to corruption every year.
While the finance ministry disputed the losses were that large and
instead blamed poor paperwork, Kenyatta acknowledged then that
corruption had reached levels that threatened national security.
REUTERS
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