Cops tough on graft suspects
2006-02-14 13:07
Nairobi - Kenyan police ordered 20 suspects in a major corruption case - including a former president's two sons - to turn in their passports and any firearms in their possession on Tuesday, the day after President Mwai Kibaki announced the resignations of his energy and education ministers.
The former education minister, George Saitoti, was on the top of the list. Former president Daniel Moi's two sons, Gideon and Philip Moi, were also included. The police also ordered the suspects not to leave the country without permission.
Kibaki said on Monday that Saitoti and former energy minister Kiraitu Murungi had left the government to allow for investigations into two separate scandals.
The resignations came as pressure mounted on Kibaki to respond to allegations of high-level government corruption made last month by John Githongo, who served as Kibaki's anti-corruption ombudsman for two years until February 2005.
Biggest financial scandal
Kibaki won elections in 2002 promising to root out the corruption that had become endemic under President Moi's 24-year rule. Now, though, Kibaki is accused of allowing the old ways.
Saitoti, who was Moi's vice-president and Kibaki's education minister, has been implicated in Kenya's biggest financial scandal, a scam dating to the early 1990s.
Police on Tuesday listed Saitoti and the other 19 men as suspects in that scam, known as Goldenberg. The scandal began as a ploy to get export credits for gold and diamond jewellery, but evolved into a complex web of financial dealings.
Earlier this month, an inquiry report on the gold scandal recommended further investigation of the role of former president Moi and pressing criminal charges against Saitoti. Saitoti was vice-president and finance minister during the early years of the scandal.
Biggest financial scandal
The second scandal, named after a fictional company called Anglo Leasing, emerged in 2004 and implicated some of Kibaki's closest confidants, namely the finance minister who resigned a week ago, Murungi and Kibaki's personal assistant Alfred Gitonga. Earlier on Monday, the presidential press service announced without giving any reason that Gitonga's contract would not be renewed.
The energy and finance ministers and Kibaki's assistant were among several high ranking officials named in a dossier Githongo made public last month.
The scams Githongo detailed in his dossier involved government contracts awarded to companies that existed only on paper and have been widely reported in the Kenyan media. But Githongo's was the first credible account of ministers' involvement.
- SAPA