E-Clips:- Business Pictorial - Githongo Set To Spill The Beans On Corruption

Former Ethics and Governance PS John Githongo, who fled to Britain last year fearing for his life, is now preparing to make public a dossier on high-level looting that is powerful enough "to bring down a government", Timesonline of London reported yesterday.

The paper said Githongo has prepared 91 pages of "a detailed chronology of investigations, death threats and State House meetings" that took place during his two-year tenure as President Kibakis special adviser on tackling graft. The dossier, Times said, identifies a number of senior Cabinet ministers close to the President for their involvement in corrupt deals worth hundreds of millions of pounds. A source told the Sunday Standard that the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission has a copy of the report but efforts to confirm this with the anti-graft body were fruitless.

However, Mwalimu Mati, executive Director of Transparency International, said he understands that there is such a report although he had not seen it. "The Kenyan public would have an interest in this report. We are happy that the public may at last know the truth," Mati said. "This report implies that the very highest levels of government are complicit in corruption as they knew everything and still allowed the implicated ministers to remain in the Cabinet," Times reported a source to have said.

Githongo, 40, a former journalist, was appointed in 2003 as a Permanent Secretary in the Office of the President. In charge of governance and ethics, he was billed as the anti-corruption czar. But by December 2003 it was clear that he had been set up to fail. After his investigations into the ports and revenue authorities, senior government officials tried to have him moved from the Office of the President to clip his powers, Times said. In April 2004 the Anglo Leasing scandal came to the fore. It would eventually lead to Githongos self-exile.

According to a 19-page executive summary seen by The Times, the British paper reported, much of Githongos new dossier details his investigation into the Anglo Leasing scam, and how some of Kibakis closest Cabinet ministers tried to block his work. The report allegedly details how a senior Cabinet minister approached Githongo when the Anglo Leasing story first broke and asked why he was investigating a well-known Asian businessman in connection with the case. The minister told Githongo that the businessman was a strong supporter of the President and had helped to pay his medical bills after an accident before the election.

In early May 2004, the paper said, the same minister told Githongo that a second businessman had sworn to kill him unless he stopped the investigation. By the middle of June, Githongo had held three meetings with the President at State House in Nairobi to discuss Anglo Leasing. At the last meeting, Githongo told Kibaki that four senior Cabinet ministers, one of the Presidents personal assistants and several permanent secretaries had known all along the true purpose of Anglo Leasing, the paper reported. Githongos report is also understood to cover several other suspect deals between January 2003 and August 2004.

Githongo, the paper said, is also believed to possess audiotapes of meetings that he held with senior government officials during his tenure. He is said to be eager to make his report public if the Government does not act on it within the next week or two. Nearly two years after the Anglo Leasing scandal broke, two permanent secretaries are the only people to have been dismissed; they are widely believed to have taken the fall for their superiors. On Friday, The Guardian of London had reported the ruling elite had misjudged Githongos determination to fight graft.