E-Clips:- Business Pictorial - Anglo Leasing Will Be Another Goldenberg

Is Anglo Leasing another Goldenberg? For Kenyans to know who the monster called Anglo Leasing is, the President should set up a judicial inquiry to investigate, expose and dismantle it.

For years, Goldenberg scandal proved intractable because it was a government scandal and the guilty state could not investigate itself. It took a new government to do anything about Goldenberg.

In investigating Anglo Leasing, little information is forthcoming from government officers who initiated the project and contract for which the government paid Sh2.7 billion.

Although the money is allegedly being refunded, the monster remains veiled. Yet Anglo Leasing is real. Public officers, including ministers, have been doing business with Anglo Leasing under both Moi and Kibaki regimes.

Under Kanu and Moi the public was told nothing about Anglo Leasing. Under Kibaki, public officers are telling the public very little.

When ministers and public officers who conceived and developed projects and signed contracts with Anglo Leasing refuse to give information about the company, they make Anglo Leasing a government scandal.

When government officers refuse to talk and create the false impression that the government can possibly do business with a company they know nothing about, inevitably their silence is bound to implicate the government.

Already people have began to see Anglo Leasing the way they see Goldenberg, and detractors of government have began to claim Anglo Leasing is a Kibaki scandal. To dispel the perception, the President must take Anglo Leasing by the horns.

To protect his office and the government from the Anglo Leasing scandal, the President must act now. While the guilty may refuse to talk, the Executive perpetuates the scandal by its indifference.

I dont see involved government officers refusing to give the President information about Anglo Leasing. After all, the buck of guilt will stop at the President and it is his government the scandal will destroy.

To get to the bottom of Anglo Leasing before too much harm is done, the President should immediately ask involved ministers and public to tell him the whole truth about Anglo Leasing.

If they refuse to talk, the President should sack and hand them over to the police and courts for prosecution. If they talk, the President should set up a judicial Commission with court powers to investigate.

The President should use a judicial commission because any institution like Public Accounts Committee without powers to stop witnesses from lying, or withholding information, cannot get the truth about Anglo Leasing.

Once a judicial commission is established, all public officers, including ministers who have had anything to do with Anglo Leasing must tell everything they know or face charges of obstructing justice.

Before they appear before a judicial commission, the President must suspend all suspects –– public officers and ministers –– that can sit on relevant evidence. When their innocence is established, they should be reinstated.

This treatment should not be confined to Anglo Leasing alone but to all scandals in the government. For thoroughness, the judicial commission must suspect everyone in the Office of the Vice-President and Ministry of Home Affairs, Office of the President, Ministry of Finance, the Attorney General and Government Information Technology Services. The judicial commission should not just look for guilty individuals. It must look for cartels of corruption to smash and dismantle. The hydra called Anglo Leasing may have lost a head when Kanu fell. It grew one as soon as Narc government came to power. The Kibaki government cannot inherit cartels of corruption and expect not be spared.