SMOKIN WANJALA’S LEGACY AT KACC
Serialization of Smokin Wanjala’s legacy.
You can agree that some names when mentioned on the judicial corridors elicit emotions or perceptions that run deep and back into time. Talking about Smoking Wanjala, I can vividly remember when he first shot into the limelight way back in 2004.
Dr. Wanjala served as a deputy director in charge of prevention of the now defunct Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission. He was appointed to the position on 9 September 2004 for a period of five years and was responsible for Research, Policy and Preventive Service.
He resigned on 18 September 2009 due to public outcry following the irregular reappointment alongside his boss Aaron Ringera and fellow deputy director Fatuma Sichale by President Mwai Kibaki. It is this period of 2004-2009 that Kenya reported the arguably highest cases of corruption in the history of the nation. Most of these cases were not decisively dealt with and this left quite a lot to be desired in the undertakings of KACC that led to its disbandment years later.
This was evident during the interview of Smokin Wanjala as the judge of Supreme Court in 2012 when the then Attorney General Githu Muigai bluntly told Wanjala that he must have resigned back in 2009 due to his ‘non-performance’.
Smokin Wanjala was in a senior position. He was able to influence policy but he didn’t. His inability to take action against corruption perpetrators in the country was so loud that during his reappointment it fueled a storm that lasted about 4weeks in which the country was completely against his reappointment.
His reign at KACC presided over the most heinous corruption scandals that saw this country lose billions of shillings and somewhat perpetrators escaped without being charged. We can’t squarely blame it on KACC but their role in ensuring that perpetrators faced the law can’t be understated. The fact that the country was completely against their reappointment is a clear indication of dissatisfaction and loss of confidence in them.
Well despite this setback, Smokin Wanjala went ahead to become a Supreme Court judge after disappearing from the public on resignation from KACC. Perhaps the public had forgotten his nonperformance and complicit, again, that is a debate for another day.
Some of these scandals that rocked the nation during his tenure at KACC went unnoticed. I will discuss a few of them. In 2004 Chamanlal Kamani was involved in a deal to build a CID forensic laboratory. On 7 June 2004 an amount of $4.7 million was wired back. The payment was a refund against the money paid for the Criminal Investigations Department forensic laboratory. Another euro 5.2 million was paid back in respect of the E-cop project, which involved computerisation of the police force and the installation of spy cameras in Nairobi by Infotalent Systems Private Limited. Chamanlal Kamani had been involved in a supply contract, as Kamsons Motors. Kampsons tendered for the supply of Mahindra Jeeps to the Police Department in the mid-1990s for close to Sh1 million (US$13,000) each, at a time when showrooms would have charged customers a sixth of the price. Moreover, the vehicles were being bought for a government department and were therefore imported duty-free. Few of the more than 1,000 units that were imported over several years are in service today
The Prisons department lost $3 million after contracting Hallmark International, a company associated with Deepak Kamani of Kamsons Motors, for the supply of 30 boilers. Only half of the boilers were delivered – from India and not the United States as had been agreed.
In 2005 plans to buy a sophisticated £20 million passport equipment system from France, as government wanted to replace its passport printing system, created conditions for corruption scandal. The transaction was originally quoted at 6 million euros from François Charles Oberthur of Paris (a supplier of Visa and MasterCards) but was awarded to a British firm, the Anglo-Leasing and Finance Company Limited, at 30 million euros, who would have sub-contracted the same French firm to do the work. Despite the lack of competitive tendering Anglo Leasing was paid a “commitment fee” of more than £600,000. Anglo Leasing’s agent is a Liverpool-based firm, Saagar Associates, owned by a woman whose family has enjoyed close links with senior officials in the Moi regime. Company records show Saagar Associates is owned by Mrs Sudha Ruparell, a 47-year-old Kenyan woman. Ruparell is the daughter of Chamanlal Kamani, the multimillionaire patriarch of a business family that enjoyed close links with senior officials in the Moi regime. Anglo Leasing made a repayment of euro 956,700 through a telegraphic transfer from Schroeder & Co Bank AG, Switzerland on 17 May 2004.
In November 2006, the government and KACC in extension was accused of failing to act on a banking fraud scam worth $1.5bn involving money laundering and tax evasion, reported by whistle-blowers as early as 2004. Investigators believe sums worth 10% of Kenya’s national income were involved. A recent auditor’s report says the scale of the operations “threatens the stability of the Kenyan economy”. This was never dealt with and in fact there was no substantial response from the SMOKIN WANJALA led anticorruption commission.
Things were so tough in Kenya that In November 2006, British Foreign Office minister Kim Howells warned, that corruption in Kenya is increasing the UK’s exposure to drug trafficking and terrorism. “People can be bought, right from the person who works at the docks in Mombasa up to the government. (…) This weakness has been recognised by drug-traffickers and probably by terrorists too.” Said Howells for the BBC.
It is worth noting that On 31 August 2007, The Guardian newspaper featured on its front page a story about more than GBP 1 billion transferred out of Kenya by the family and associates of former Kenyan leader Daniel arap Moi. The Guardian sourced the information from the Wikileaks article The looting of Kenya under President Moi and its analysis of a leaked investigative document (“the Kroll report”) prepared for the Kibaki government in 2004 to try to recover money stolen during Moi’s rule. The transfer of the corrupt monies was happening under the watch of KACC which Smokin Wanjala was the Deputy Director.
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