Introduction

In December 2002, the 24 year rule of Kenya's President Daniel Arap Moi was ended by the election victory of Mwai Kibaki. Elected on an anti-corruption platform, it was hoped that President Kibaki would end grand corruption in Kenya. In January 2003 Kibaki appointed John Githongo, formerly of Transparency International, as his personal advisor on Anti Corruption and Good Governance.[1] One of the first anti-corruption activities of Mr. Githongo on behalf of President Kibaki was to engage Kroll & Associates (UK), a private investigation and security firm, to trace and report on what was said by Transparency International to be over 3 billion US Dollars stashed abroad, by the former President Moi and his closest associates.[2]
Close to half of Kenya's 35 million citizens live under the UN's poverty level of 1 US dollar a day. If the restitution programme started in 2003 had been completed it would have been possible to get justice for the tens of millions of Kenyans who live in abject poverty - as the political elite live as Dollar Millionaires on the proceeds of corruption.
The leaked document, dated April 2004, is clearly self explanatory - being one of the preliminary reports received by the Government of Kenya (described in the report as the "client"). The persons stated as "Targets" are President Moi's closest associates and relatives.
Contemporaneous media coverage of the time reveals a determination by the Kibaki government to trace and seize the foreign assets of Moi's associates.[3] However at some point in May 2004, the Kibaki government itself suffered a credibility blow when several of the President's closest advisors were implicated in a 777 million US Dollar corruption scandal known as the Anglo Leasing scandal. The fallout of this scandal resulted in the gradual sidelining and eventual exile in the UK (in January 2005) of John Githongo after threats to his life.[4] The anti-corruption czar had lost the support of the Kenyan President. It was at this point that the Government dropped its international asset tracing and recovery efforts. It is believed it was at this point that the Kroll Report on Moi and his associates was suppressed.
On August 28th 2007, about 100 days before the forthcoming Presidential election, President Kibaki's re-election campaign received the formal endorsement of his predecessor, Daniel Moi.[5] Ex-President Moi's influence over Kibaki's regime is obvious and also evidenced by his recent appointment as a Personal Peace Envoy of Kibaki to the Sudan.[6]
None of the assets traced and identified by Kroll have been impounded and Moi and his associates are experiencing a resurgence in political clout. Among these assets are a bank in Belgium, hotels and residences in the USA, UK, South Africa, Namibia and as far away as Australia, a 10% shareholding in Kenya's most successful telecommunications company (a joint venture with Vodafone PLC of the UK) and massive real estate and agricultural investments.
The leak which emanated from within high levels of the Kenyan Government is motivated by the desire to demonstrate that President Kibaki has clear-cut evidence of his predecessor's corruption and complicity in corruption, and has chosen to suppress the evidence and worse still has gone into a political and economic alliance with the Moi group.
A second motivation is the sheer scale of the theft of public funds by Moi and his associates. The figures in the report run into (if added up) the billions of US Dollars - comparable in magnitude to the looting of other infamous kleptocrats such as Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, Sani Abacha of Nigeria, Suharto of Indonesia and Alberto Fujimori of Peru.
The leaked material is extremely politically sensitive. Ex-President Moi, a corrupt, brutal, discredited former dictator, has somehow again become a key player in political life in Kenya - so much, that he is now an essential pillar in current President Kibaki's re-election campaign. His massive financial resources are expected to be used to buy Kibaki popular support particularly in the populous Rift Valley region, which voted almost to the man against Kibaki in the last election, and in November 2005 during a constitutional referendum. The leaker thinks the re-emergence of President Moi is scandalous and must be stopped.
The leak will certainly interest the Kenyan media, for whom this report represents a grail of sorts. Kenya's large international press corps will also be an interested audience. With a Presidential election only a few months away, the report comes to light at a critical time.