E-Clips:- Business Pictorial - Kenya Reinstates Ministers After Corruption Scandal

The Guardian

The Kenyan president, Mwai Kibaki, has reinstated two of his top cabinet ministers who resigned after being to linked to major corruption scandals in February.

George Saitoti and Kiraitu Murungi, both close allies of the president, returned to their posts at the education and energy ministries yesterday. Opposition politicians and civil society activists seized on the president's decision as further proof of his unwillingness to tackle high-level graft.

Mr Saitoti resigned after being linked to the so-called Goldenberg scandal, in which hundreds of millions of pounds of public money was paid out in a bogus gold and diamond export scheme while he was finance minister during the early 1990s. He was cleared in July after a high court judge said the government had previously exonerated him over the scam. The attorney general has appealed against the ruling.

Mr Murungi was one of three ministers to resign over the Anglo Leasing affair, which seriously embarrassed the Kibaki administration and involved a multi-million pound hi-tech passport scheme awarded to a fictitious firm. Though Mr Murungi was allegedly captured on audiotape asking the exiled anti-corruption chief, John Githongo, to "go-slow" in his investigations into the fraud, the Kenya anti-corruption commission failed to recommend his prosecution.