Kenya hotel sale is 'mafia-like'
2008-06-29 20:25
Nairobi - Corruption watchdogs and senior
politicians rounded on Kenyan Finance Minister Amos Kimunya on
Sunday over the sale of a luxury Nairobi hotel to Libyan
investors in a deal they said had the whiff of scandal.
Some called for the resignation of Kimunya - at the helm of
east Africa's largest economy since 2006 - after he announced
on Friday the Grand Regency went for 2.9 billion Kenya shillings
($45m) in a government-to-government deal.
"The price is laughable. It cannot meet the cost of the soft
furnishings alone," fellow minister Mutula Kilonzo, who runs the
Nairobi Metropolitan portfolio, told local media.
"The country has been cheated, and you can give this
corruption another name worse than Goldenberg."
The hotel, owned by a Kenyan tycoon accused of being the
architect of the so-called Goldenberg scandal that nearly sunk
Kenya's economy in the 1990s, was viewed by many Kenyans as a
symbol of the graft bedevilling their nation.
Kamlesh Pattni, who was tried but never convicted
despite multiple probes into the siphoning of some $1bn of public funds over bogus diamond and gold export, handed the
five-star, multi-storey hotel to the central bank earlier this
year.
Media speculated that the move had won him immunity.
Too 'sweet' an offer
Kimunya, who told Parliament last week the hotel's sale
would be public, said in his statement on Friday that authorities
received too "sweet" an offer to refuse from the Libyans. He did not name the buyers.
Critics accused Kimunya of under-valuing the hotel, which
went for about 4 billion shillings when Pattni bought it in
1994.
They also criticised Kimunya for the secret nature of the
sale, rather than a public tender.
"The cycle of impunity that allows public officers to act as
if Kenya is a nation without law must be broken," said local
anti-corruption watchdog the Mars Group.
It called for the resignation of Kimunya, Attorney General
Amos Wako, Central Bank governor Njuguna Ndung'u and the head of
the Kenya Anti Corruption Commission Aaron Ringera.
Sale was 'mafia-like'
Lands Minister James Orengo said the sale was "mafia-like".
Legislator Gitobu Imanyara said he would present a motion in
Parliament to censure Kimunya over what he termed "utter
contempt of parliament".
Kimunya could not be reached by Reuters for comment.
But he was quoted in the Sunday Nation as saying he should
be applauded for finally bringing money into public coffers from
the controversial hotel.