Kenya Times: 17th December 2006
Kenya’s foreign missions on spot over graft claims
House pinhole
With BENSON Amollo
Whereas Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Martha Karua maintains that asset tracing and recovery in the war on corruption is up and kicking, the assertion is received with scepticism by many Kenyans, especially against the background of mounting concern on the integrity of the country’s foreign missions.Findings by the Parliamentary Accounts Committee (PAC) reveal a rot in Kenya’s embassies abroad with allegations of deep-seated corruption among envoys.
A recent tour of the Hague by members of PAC found out that diplomats are perpetuating an alarming extravagance and fraud that is causing the taxpayers millions of shillings.Ordinarily, diplomats would be very handy in the war on trans-national graft stemming from money laundering and trans-national tendering. They should be men and women of integrity with the intellectual acquaintance to confront matters of diplomacy for the good of the country and her relations with the respective host government.
Apart from disbanding the network of the former regime’s envoys, the Narc government forgot to steer clear of the role of envoys. As such, ambassadors even today, still look at themselves as special spies on a mission to grasp eavesdrops for the government. They still shroud themselves in a cloud of mystery before the public especially their nationals living in those countries and in the confusion, make a kill out of the taxpayers’ money allocated for their sustenance.
PAC has also warned that if unchecked, the economic implications of the embassies’ improper financial decisions, deliberate sabotage of government financial regulations and outright fraud would worsen by the day and likely lead to a closure of several embassies after outstripping their budgets.
The visit to the Hague and other embassies in Europe by a seven member team of the committee came to a close with revelations of big time extravagance by a number of diplomats who have staged an adamant defiance to basic financial regulations that were passed by Parliament as stop gap measures to embezzlement of monetary allocations to embassies and other diplomatic missions.
The team led by MPs Billow Kerrow, Norman Nyagah and Peter Odoyo, has consequently called on the Office of the Controller and Auditor General to send special auditors to embassies in Europe to clear the pending audit queries.Up to 20 cases says the committee are pending in a number of embassies in Europe with audit queries going into close to half a million shillings.
Some of the glaring cases include a central heating system at the ambassador’s residence in Netherlands whose procurement cost the taxpayer in excess of Sh15 million. Another extreme, is the renovation works at the Kenyan High Commission in London where Sh7 million cannot be accounted for.
The renovation works at the Commission, a building owned by a Kenyan, included repairs of the kitchen and a verandah. Committee members arguably dismissed the expenditure as a rip off and a major drain on the taxpayers’ money.
These revelations, however, come against a backdrop of unheeded complaints over corruption on the same embassies by Kenyans living in these countries. Through activist unions, most Kenyans, especially in Europe have made their complaints in writing to the Government, but nothing has so far happened.
A group calling itself the Orange Democratic Movement-Scandinavia, lodged a serious complaint over the past four months over allegations of corruption, land grabbing, Visa and Passport rackets, human smuggling, illegal sacking of employees, mistreatment of junior staff members and money laundering at the Kenyan Embassy in Stockholm.
The human rights body claims that envoy has allowed serious illegalities during her tenure of duty in the Nordic country with an impunity to the Swedish law. The body has called on the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission director Justice Aaron Ringera, to dispatch a team of investigators to Stockholm to unravel the claims of financial impropriety.
There are also claims of land grabbing at the residence of the Kenyan envoy in Scandinavia , a matter which the ODM-Scandinavia, says cost a gardener at the residence when he made the revelation to some Kenyans in Stockholm. The parcel of land is said to have been transferred to a neighbour of the envoy under circumstances which remain unclear.
Before the questionable transfer was executed, according to the group, a barbed wire fence that separated the Ambassador’s residence and the neighbour was pulled down together with a barbed wire fence that marked the boarder of the residence and a lake that stretches from the compound.
Such private transfers, are disallowed by the Swedish laws. The Kenyan laws also prohibit embassy staff including the Ambassador from executing such transfers which end altering the original map of the embassy land that the Nairobi is aware of.
Originally the land on which the Kenyan envoys’ residence lies in Stockholm was purchased by the Government at a cost of Sh20 million and whose original maps are with the Swedish Land Office. The matter would warrant serious prosecution and staff involved recalled to the country. Former staff who might have finished their tour of duty but implicated should also be prosecuted locally. ODM-Scandinavia has vowed to demand for an original land map of the Ambassador’s residence from the Swedish land office as part of its own investigations on the allegations which should warrant prosecution under Swedish law.
“As a Party in Scandinavia opposed to corruption in all its forms, ODM-Scandinavia is concerned that corruption that has eaten into the fabric of the Kenyan society has been exported abroad to the extent that land belonging to the government is also being grabbed and sold, just like in Kenya. ODM-Scandinavia hopes that the matter will be treated with the urgency it deserves and that immediate action will be taken by the Government over the issue,” reads part of a statement by the group.
Related Stories:
- Land Grabbing At Embassy: Neighbor Spent Ksh 2 Million On The Deal
- Evidence Shows Land At Ambassador’s Residence Was Grabbed
- ODM-K Scandinavia To Organize Tour Of Ambassador’s Residence
- “Investigate Kenya Embassy” – ODM-Scandinavia
- Kenya Embassy Worker Fired Under Mysterious Circumstances
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