Kenya’s current President Mwai Kibaki is sheltering a fellow looter, former President Daniel Arap Moi. In 2007 these two crooks reached a pact: an electorally desperate Mwai Kibaki promised to protect Moi if he (Moi) backed Kibaki for a second term. The deal would ensure that Moi’s political base — a group comprised of several Kalenjin sub-tribes — would support Kibaki, ….so they thought.

The rest is history — Kibaki clearly lost the election, and like his predecessors proceeded to steal it, leading to the worst eruption of tribal violence in the history of Kenya.

Most Kenyans do not have the resources with which to unearth the extent of the vast criminal enterprise that dictator Moi’s regime ran during his 24 year tenure as the second president of Kenya, from August 22, 1978 to December 30, 2002. Even though press freedom has improved significantly in Kenya, journalists still fear for their lives — if and when they “cross the path” of some well-monied crooks with ties to the political elite.

The massive theft conducted by Moi, his family and cronies spilled over to the Kibaki regime, aided and abetted by western companies(with their neo-colonialist governments looking the other way). Typically, fraud on the Kenyan taxpayer is perpetrated through non-delivery of goods and services and incredibly massive overpricing.

Philip Moi was mostly associated with motor vehicle tax fraud and other low-down economic vices, whereas Gideon would mainly wait for government-funded projects to broker deals. At the local level there is(was) no single company in which Philip held(holds) shares directly. He used(uses) proxies who range from low key Asians and houseboys who know(knew) little about the wealth in their names.

The breathtaking extent of corruption perpetrated by Daniel Toroitich arap Moi and his hoodlum-offsprings is(was) breathtaking. Like his predecessor, the first president of Kenya, the ruthless and murderous Jomo Kenyatta, Moi was determined to be the biggest thief and landowner in the Republic. The “Professor of Politics” robbed his people with reckless disregard.

A 110-page report by the international risk consultancy Kroll in 2004, “alleges” that relatives and associates of Mr Moi siphoned off more than £1bn+ of government money. That puts 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 Moi Family: The Biggest Thieves in The History of Kenya

   Daniel arap Moi and Son Gideon Moi

The assets accumulated included multi-million 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.

The report, commissioned by the Kenyan government, was submitted in 2004, but never acted upon. It details how:

•   Mr Moi’s sons – Philip and Gideon – were reported to be worth £384m and £550m respectively;

•   His associates colluded with Italian drug barons and printed counterfeit money;

•   His clique owned a bank in Belgium;

•   The threat of losing their wealth prompted threats of violence between Mr Moi’s family and his political aides;

•   £4m was used to buy a home in Surrey (England) and £2m to buy a flat in Knightsbridge. (England)

The Kroll investigation into the former regime was commissioned by President Mwai Kibaki shortly after he came to power on an anti-corruption platform in 2003. It was meant to be the first step towards recovering some of the money stolen during Mr. Moi’s 24-year rule, which earned Kenya the reputation as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

But soon after the investigation was launched, Mr Kibaki’s government was caught up in its own scandal, known as Anglo Leasing, which involved awarding huge government contracts to bogus companies.

Below is the copy of the leaked report by the Kroll associates on the extent of looting in Kenya by the Moi regime. The Current leadership under president Mwai Kibaki has kept this report under lock and key, reneging on the promise given to Kenyans for zero tolerance on corruption.

[ Click Here For The Kroll Report ]

OTHER RESOURCES:

1.   The Githongo Dossier [PDF] — Whistle Blower John Githongo’s Anatomy of The Anglo-Leasing Scandal a.k.a Anglo-Fleecing Scandal. President Mwai Kibaki received Githongo’s dossier containing details of corruption in the government. However, no one was punished and the case slipped from the public eye.

2.   Names of The Perpetrators of the 2008 Election Violence in Kenya [PDF]

3.   The Alston Report [Microsoft Word DOC] — Prof. Philip Alston, a UN human rights official, released his final report on Thursday, May 28 2009, in which he accused top Kenyan police officials of running death squads and describes Kenyan courts as “slow and corrupt“.

4.   The Waki Report [PDF] — The Waki Commission, officially The Commission of Inquiry on Post Election Violence (CIPEV), was an international commission of inquiry established by the Government of Kenya in February 2008 to investigate the clashes in Kenya following the disputed Kenyan presidential election of 2007.

5.   It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower — In her book, journalist Michela Wrong (In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz) tells the story of John Githongo (see item#1 above), a journalist and activist (and Wrong’s personal friend) who joined newly elected Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki’s administration in 2003 as anti-corruption czar. Githongo’s reformist hopes were betrayed when his investigation of a contracting scandal earned him the enmity of colleagues, death threats and smear campaigns. He fled to Britain in 2005, taking along secret recordings of conversations in which powerful officials implicated themselves in the scam. Githongo, a charming idealist with an intransigence bordering on egomania, is a magnetic protagonist for Wrong’s exposé of the machinery of corruption. She dissects the deeper problem of Kenya’s patronage system, which exploits the state as a source of loot and makes allowances for the tribal parties in power. The resulting graft and discrimination–which Wrong argues fueled the communal slaughter surrounding Kenya’s 2007 election–reinforces Kenyans’ view of existence as a merciless contest, in which only ethnic preference offers hope of survival. Githongo’s saga highlights this pan-African problem and addresses possibilities for change.

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By: Austin Ejiet

   Nicolas Sarkozy and Omar Bongo Ondimba
Last month a French corruption inquiry accused the then Gabonese President, Omar Bongo Ondimba, of two grievous crimes: salting away a sinful proportion of Gabon’s wealth in an estimated 71 foreign bank accounts in France alone and buying off whole streets of the primest real estate in Paris and Nice; and secondly, of encouraging similar kleptocratic tendencies among the leaders of the republics of Congo and Equatorial Guinea, Denis Sassou-Nguesso and Teodoro Obiang Nguema respectively. The three West Africa countries are prodigiously endowed with crude oil deposits the combined proceeds of which could have wiped out Africa’s entire foreign debt. Instead, that oil wealth had become the preserve of a rapacious troika.

The French cannot pretend to wake up in May 2009 to investigate what they themselves created as far back as February of 1964. On February 18, 1964, a group of progressive members of the Gabonese armed forces overthrew the neo-colonial regime of President Leon M’ba in which Albert Benard Bongo was vice president.

The young army officers immediately released all political prisoners, promising sweeping political and economic reforms. But the next night, French paratroopers sent by General de Gaulle arrived in Gabon and reinstated Leon M’ba as president. On the latter’s death from natural causes in 1967, Bongo became president.

Under an Islamised president Omar Bongo, Gabon became the Jewel of French imperialism in Africa, a staging post for the latter’s colourful adventures which included the much vaunted but worthless support for the Biafran secessionist movement between July 1967 and January 1970; the invasion of Guinea- Conakry on November 22, 1970; the attempt to gain a beach-head in Cabinda in 1975; and the disastrous mercenary attack on Benin on January 16, 1977 organised by Bob Denard in coordination with the French secret services.

Along with three other African presidents, Omar Bongo openly supported Apartheid in South Africa at the behest of France, often busting UN-sanctioned embargoes against arms shipments to South Africa and Savimbi’s UNITA.

But France was reaping more than just strategic dividends from Gabon. It controlled the modern sector of the economy to the tune of 65 per cent and enjoyed a total (no pun intended with the Total oil company) monopoly of Gabon’s vast oil reserves. In exchange for Omar Bongo’s astonishing largesse, the French helped keep him in power and allowed him to plunder the remnants of his country’s resources to the fullest extent of his obscene appetites.

So when France came up with a belated enquiry into the president’s corrupt excesses, they did not fool anybody. President Bongo lashed out at his former colonial masters the way Marshal Mobutu had lashed out at Belgium following the latter’s description of him as a “Ferdinand Marcos.” To underscore his displeasure, Bongo checked himself into a Spanish hospital rather than a French one. The Gabonese people too, a few of them at any rate reportedly jeered and booed both current French president Nicolas Sarkozy and his predecessor Jacques Chirac, yelling: “We don’t want you – leave!” “No to France!”

Nevertheless, the departed president was buried last Thursday at his home town appropriately named “Franceville.” The president had forgotten to build a pyramid or at least a mausoleum to house his remains, persuaded perhaps that he had more time to enjoy this side of eternity.

The Legacy of Omar Bongo

Let France do the right thing. A coffin, they say, has no pockets. That half-hearted commission of enquiry should be turned into a genuine and thorough treasure hunt for the late president’s hidden wealth.

If the French put their mind to it, they can track down Omar Bongo’s last penny. That money should, of course, be handed back to the Gabonese people, after a genuine democratic electoral exercise has found and installed, not a political spare tyre, but a popularly elected successor who should serve a maximum of two terms.

Reference: French President Sarkozy jeered at Bongo’s funeral

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