SHOULD KENYA ANTI-CORRUPTION COMMISSION (KACC) BE DISBANDED?

Allow me to comment on this debate. I served in the KACC as a Crime Reading Officer in the Legal Services Department between 2005 and 2006. Prior to joining KACC I had served the Government in the Armed Forces where I had successfully prosecuted several criminal cases before the Court Martial.

I would like to tell Kenyans a number of things that they do not know about the Commission.

1. The Commission is staffed by very experienced officers with wide experience and expertise in many disciplines. Most of them are very committed to their work and would like to see Kenya become a corrupt free society. They spend a lot of time to collect and collate evidence regarding mega financial scandals which are a reflection of looting of public resources in the years gone by. The officers have done a lot and if the number of files under investigation is anything to go by, then they deserve commendation and not condemnation. Some of the files under investigation may however never see the light of day, and this for several reasons. Many of the scandals under investigation relate to many members of the current political class starting from Ministers, Assistant Ministers, Members of Parliament, Permanent Secretaries, CEOs of State Corporations etc.

Secondly, Justice Ringeera is himself a major hindrance to the ongoing investigations. A lot of time is spent by the officers doing in-house memos and proof- reading their own work. This is because the judge does not trust his own officers, especially those with police background and views every investigation with the mind set of a serving judge. Justice Ringeera has refused to accept the fact that he is no longer a judge but an investigator. He has therefore put a lot of administrative hurdles in the way of investigating officers and he has to sign each and every file, letter or memo that leaves the commission to another government agency. Due this beauracracy a completed investigation file would take not less than two months to leave the Commission for the Attorney General's Chambers. At the AG's Office the file is then read and re-read again and would take another month before suspects are arraigned in court. If there are further queries from the State Prosecutors, then the exchange of letters and memos would take another two months before the file ever gets to court.

2. The other most baffling thing about Justice Ringeera and his top management is their inability to put up proper governance structures in a public body which claims to be the epitome of virtue. The hiring, staffing and deployment policies of KACC are very poor and give the Judge a lot of room to exercise open favouritism. A good example is in the legal department where it is not strange to find officers who graduated the same year, with similar qualifications and the same number of years of experience occupying very varied positions. The favoured lot come from an enclave of Eastern Province and occupies positions which are 3 or 4 grades senior to their contemporaries or even more senior advocates. I reserve the names of the effected officers for obvious reasons. This disparity is also evident in the other departments and every insider in the Commission knows that there is marked difference in stipends between the favoured lot and the rest.

3. The other problem at the Commission is that of leakage of information relating to sensitive investigations. When I was serving in the Commission, it was not strange to find some defence lawyers with more information relating to case file than the KACC Investigators/ Crime Reading Officers. Some of the defence lawyers would openly boast that their clients (mainly politicians) are well connected to top managers at the Commission. This is not strange since the appointment of Justice Ringeera and other top managers was passed in Parliament after political horse trading. This is why the present leadership of the Commission has demonstrated ineptitude and incapacity in dealing with past and present corruption once and for all. Hon. Justice Aaron Gitonga Ringera may have been excellent as a law professor and a judge but his stewardship of the KACC is questionable. If the comments of some Ministers, MPs, anti graft activists, ordinary Kenyans and some of officers who served under him are anything to go by, then his leadership of KACC is nothing to write home about.


4. My take on this debate is that the KACC as an institution is doing a good job against many odds. The officers are very committed too but the leadership is very wanting. Kenya needs KACC. There are internal problems in the Commission which cause delay in completing investigations. These are not institutional, but of bad leadership. Parliament should not condemn the Commission because of one person.