Thieving Country? EACC Probing All 47 County Governments For Graft

NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 3- The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) is probing all the 47 County Governments for graft-related crimes.

This was revealed by EACC Chief Executive Officer Twalib Mbarak during an interview on Citizen Television on Thursday.

He said while devolution was a brilliant idea, it seemingly devolved even the vice that sees a third of Kenya’s budget looted.

“All Counties, have got issues and all of them, we are investigating,” Mbarak asserted. “Out of the 47 Counties, we have charged 9 Governors.”

Some of the common crimes committed at the County level according to EACC include irregular procurement practices, inflated pricing of commodities, kickbacks, use of proxy firms and relatives to swindle the county coffers.

One of the biggest challenges, Mbarak said, in the war against the now deep-rooted graft at the County level is the use of illegally acquired proceeds to compromise witnesses.

“The DPP has withdrawn corruption cases due to lack of witnesses, some of whom were compromised,” Mbarak said.

On the process of investigations, he said, “We don’t investigate for the sake of it, we just don’t chase the wind. We conduct preliminary investigations to ensure that we don’t waste time and money investigating people or politicians who could be settling personal scores.”

He was speaking ahead of the International Anti-Corruption Day on December 9, 2021.

Also attending the interview was the Director of Public Prosecution Noordin Haji and Charity Kagwi, who is the Head of Criminal Justice and Anti-Corruption United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

This year’s them of the International Anti-Corruption Day is ‘Your Right, Your Role: Say No To Corruption.’

The theme highlights not only the rights of citizens such as access to education, clean water, and environment, decent living conditions, medical care among others but also touches on the people’s role in fighting corruption.

DPP Haji cited failure by state officers to step aside once implicated in the corruption-related cases as a major challenge.

“One of the greatest challenges we face in fighting graft is failure to step aside by Public/State Officers once charged, due to varied Constitutional interpretation on who a Public/State Officer is,”  DPP Haji said.

He called on Kenyans to join the ODPP and other state agencies in calling for the elimination of the vice.

“Members of the public need to help us fight corruption. As we get to 2022, we should ask ourselves as citizens, which caliber of leaders are we electing to the office? We get corrupt leaders to the office then later complain over their being corrupt, ” the DPP said.

When put to task over the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (KEMSA) where Kenyans allegedly lost millions of shillings, he said, “we don’t rush cases for the sake of proving to Kenyans that we are working. A case must be watertight. Evidence gathering by investigative agencies gets complicated when it involves foreign jurisdictions so we have to wait.”

The KEMSA scandal involved highly influential persons, some of whom have been questioned by the EACC.

“Public prosecution and decision to charge is the mandate of the ODPP. Delegating the powers to prosecute to agencies such as KRA is the mandate of the DPP so let us steer clear and respect each other’s mandate and work for the good of Kenyans,” he said.

Kagwi said, “UNODC is glad to be offering technical support to criminal justice actors. Corruption is not an easy battle because it has a way of fighting back. I commend the CJ for the efforts to bring the actors together.”