E-Clips:- Business Pictorial

I am hot on your heels and Kenyans will soon know the truth on Anglo Leasing contracts, self-exiled former Ethics and Governance PS John Githongo has warned President Kibaki and his ministers.

"Now and again the odd fool will tell me that I have done the Gikuyu community a great disservice ... my employment contract did not say Gikuyu Inc. at the top. I was employed by the Kenyan people." On the crosshairs is President Kibaki whose Vice-President Moody Awori, Energy minister Mr Kiraitu Murungi, and former Finance minister Mr David Mwiraria, who he repeats knew too much on how 18 sleazy tenders and contracts worth Sh50 billion, were spurned.

The promise to personally unmask those involved in economic crimes in which the Government signed contracts with and paid out monies to shadowy non-existent backstreet companies, came after the revealing staccato paragraph with resonating questions:

"It is indisputable that on September 8, 2003, the Vice-President approved the passport deal. On October 2, 2003 then Minister for Finance Mwiraria did the same. The Attorney General approved both contracts, and now purports to close the files on the cover-up. When are they, and their appointing authority, the President, going to take personal responsibility for approving a contract with a non-existent company? When are they going to be made personally responsible?"

He maintained the President, in whose name he got onto the tracks of the Anglo Leasing phantoms, was in the picture of what he was doing in relation to Anglo Leasing at every stage.

"That I am not an investigator does not wipe away the fact that billions of shillings of taxpayers’ money was literally given away by senior Government officials, including the Minister for Finance and the Vice- President of Kenya."

He added: "The fact remains that KACC seems totally unconcerned about this. The fact still remains that President Kibaki has done nothing to end this charade, which I informed him about more than two years ago."

Ksh50 billion at stake

His was a stinging criticism of last Monday’s decision by the Attorney-General Mr Amos Wako to close the investigation file on his claims against top Government officials, particularly Energy minister Kiraitu Murungi, that they were engaged in an unrelenting spree to cover up what has turned out to be the sleaziest crime in the Kibaki administration.

Wako and Ringera had concluded Githongo was not a licensed investigator, his tapes were unintelligible, he refused to give a formal statement, denial by a lawyer that he passed over a file on Githongo’s father to Kiraitu, and that there was no evidence to lay the proper basis for the playback of the tape.

Githongo said: "Anglo Leasing is real and not imagined. It is not limited to the two contracts (passport and forensic laboratory). It is a fraudulent series of 18 contracts amounting to over Sh50 billion that remain unresolved. It implicates the Vice- President and other senior members of the Government of Kenya. What serious actions have been taken to solve this crime against the Kenyan people?"

He added: "The only action the Government has taken is to show that it is determined to try to erase this crime from our memory by using public money to issue clearance statements starting with that of Ambassador Muthaura in June 2004, and culminating in yesterday’s KACC Gazette Notice."

No action will be taken

Then the most indicting on President Kibaki: "As I declared in my statement of September 19, 2006, neither Mr Justice Ringera, nor the Government of President Mwai Kibaki, have shown any serious interest in pursuing the perpetrators of this scandal. Justice Ringera has made it clear to me on several previous occasions that no action will be taken on the perpetrators of this scandal before the General Election due this year, if ever."

In an exclusive interview with The Standard on September 30, last year, Githongo introduced the analogy of the skunk to support his consistent statement that Anglo Leasing had its roots in retired President Moi’s administration, but the incoming Narc members tried to milk it.

"Kanu handed us a skunk and we took it home as a pet. Not only did we assume the dubious transactions of the past, we went ahead to use the same corrupt model to create our own shady deals. If you take a skunk home as a pet willingly, it is yours together with its disturbing flagrance. It is disingenuous of you to blame the person you took it from for the smell and it is dishonest for the person who gave it to you to point at you and scream that these days you smell."

On Saturday, he once again defended himself against dismissal by Justice Ringera, Mr Wako and some of President Kibaki’s fiercest supporters that his claims are windy, malicious and vexatious.