Moi to be grilled about graft
2003-06-17 14:57
Nairobi - The Kenyan government has ordered anti-corruption police to question retired president Daniel arap Moi about a banking scandal that has robbed the state of millions of dollars, said assistant justice minister Robinson Githae on Tuesday.
"We have ordered investigators to question Moi on the emerging information that he ordered parastatal chiefs to deposit government funds into the collapsed Euro Bank," he said.
"Should evidence emerge that he gave those orders, then a decision will be made on what to do with him, on how he handled the office as president - whether he misused it or not," Githae said.
Euro Bank, which collapsed in February with more than 1.8 billion shillings (about R190m) in public funds, was owned by people linked to Moi and his ousted Kenya African National Union (Kanu) party, in power from independence in 1963 until it was roundly beaten in December's general elections.
The money is unlikely to be recovered because vital banking data was destroyed by officials when the scandal went public.
The fight against corruption was stepped up a notch after President Mwai Kibaki's National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) was voted to power in last December's general elections.
The Kibaki government recently estimated that the systematic looting during Moi's regime cost the country more than 680 billion shillings (about R73bn) in a decade.