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Story by NATION Reporters

Justice minister Martha Karua yesterday accused rich countries of frustrating the war on corruption by shielding wealth looted from poor states. She accused Western nations of applying double standards in the fight against international crime and only giving special attention to terrorism and drug trafficking.

“The international crime in not without contradiction and double standards. Drug-related crime and terrorism especially through the eyes of some nations are given special attention. Corruption which is the major cause of poverty, degradation and inhuman living conditions, is not sufficiently addressed.”

While Third World countries had signed onto the UN agreements on the fight against corruption, the minister said, developed nations had not shown a similar interest. “What are developed nations doing to enforce the UN convention against corruption? They seem to pay lip service to it by concentrating more on assisting developing countries to set up laws and institutions to fight this vice.

“They are silent on the repatriation of funds siphoned out of developing countries and stashed in their countries. I’m calling on a shift of focus to the developed world,” the minister said. Ms Karua did not make any direct reference to funds suspected to have been stolen from Kenyan taxpayers and shipped off to Europe.

Developing world

“The vigour with which suspected terrorists are pursued especially by the Western world generally should be equal to the vigour that suspects of corruption in developing nations are pursued,” she told lawyers from 57 countries attending the 15th Commonwealth Law Conference at KICC in Nairobi. The minister asked them to propose laws that would speed up freezing of assets owned by corruption suspects in foreign countries.

She lined up successes of the Kibaki administration in the war on corruption but admitted that the public was dissatisfied. She attributed slow progress in prosecution of graft cases to numerous constitutional applications by suspects.

The minister spoke nearly a fortnight after leakage of the Kroll report which linked former President Moi’s allies to Sh130 billion suspected to have been looted and stashed abroad. Later, Mr Karua told journalists that she could not comment on the report because investigators had not handed over recommendations to the Attorney General.

The Government commissioned Kroll and Associates to track down money suspected to have been illegally acquired but has remained tight-lipped more than two years after receiving it. “Freezing, seizure and repatriation of proceeds of corruption should be facilitated by the developed world where dishonest developing world leadership hide their ill-gotten wealth and where they heavily invest,” said the minister.

She noted that diplomacy had failed the test of seeking a just and peaceful world for all. “Diplomacy has become synonymous with hypocrisy and abandonment of the true quest for respect of human rights and human dignity. We have lacked the moral courage to confront the truth and to say No to agents of destruction, racism, subjugation, rape and plunder of resources.”