U.S. Envoy Wanted Visa Bans for Ringera And Kosgey

Nairobi Star (Nairobi)

Francis Mureithi

15 July 2011

The US Embassy in Nairobi wanted travel bans issued against former Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission boss Aaron Ringera and Tinderet MP Henry Kosgey along with Attorney General Amos Wako. According to fresh Wikileaks cables, former ambassador Michael Ranneberger wrote to Washington in 2009 seeking security advisory opinions on whether the three could be barred from entering America.

While US government issued a visa ban on Wako on November 1, 2009, it appears not to have been implemented the request against Ringera and Kosgey, who was then Industrialization minister. The Ringera cable was written barely a week after President Kibaki controversially reappointed Ringera as the KACC director on August 31, 2009. He resigned three weeks later after a public protest.

The cable seeking Kosgey’s visa ban is dated August 27, 2009; Wako September 1; and Ringera September 9. Ranneberger listed various allegations against Ringera, Wako and Kosgey. Over Ringera, Ranneberger claimed that KACC boss had not done enough to fight corruption and end the culture of impunity.

He said KACC was not moving forward on scandals like Anglo-Leasing and Goldenberg. He quoted the book It’s Our Turn to Eat by Michela Wrong which chronicled former anti-corruption czar John Githongo’s rise and fall from power after 2002.

Ranneberger told Washington that in June 2006 KACC, under Ringera, had provided a report to President Kibaki on Anglo-Leasing entitled “Status of the Investigation of Security Related Contracts.” “In that document, the KACC indicates that there is “a probability of prosecution” for four senior government officials… Not one of them has been successfully investigated and prosecuted on the Anglo-Leasing case,” said the diplomat in Wikileaks. “This means that many of those suspected of stealing massively from the country’s Treasury have remained not only unpunished, but on the job as Ministers of Government to this day,” the ambassador wrote. “Ringera argues that he has recommended prosecutions of ministers, MPs and others on corruption charges.Yet none of them have been prosecuted,” said Ranneberger. “In the case of Anglo-Leasing, he asserts that he is held up by various court cases that have impeded prosecution. He and the Attorney General act in concert to decry these circumstances, some of which have been in place for years, but they do not act separately or in concert to seek changes to law or to key rulings to ensure that the cases move forward,” added Ranneberger.

Ranneberger claimed that Kosgey, with fellow minister Sally Kosgey, were named in the Ndung’u Land Report as having received more than 300 hectares of the South Nandi forest in 1999. Ranneberger further claimed Kosgey was named in the Waki Commission in connection with the 2007/2008 post election violence. “The report alleged that Kosgey participated in incitement, planning, and illegal financing of post-election violence in and around his rural constituency of Tinderet in the Nandi Hills district of Rift Valley province,” said Ranneberger. “In July 2009, Kosgey was publicly accused by his Assistant Minister Nderitu Mureithi (a member of Kibaki’s Party of National Unity) of improperly firing three heads of parastatals (the Industrial Development Bank, the Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute, and the Kenya Industrial Estates) without following proper procedures and without consulting the boards of directors of those companies,” wrote Ranneberger.

In seeking a visa ban against Wako, Ranneberger said the AG had repeatedly been accused by civil society groups as well as by Ringera of failing to prosecute cases of corruption. “Amos Wako has been Kenya’s Attorney General for the past 18 years. During this period, despite a string of major corruption scandals, he has not only failed to prosecute successfully a single senior governmental figure but he also has actively thwarted their prosecution,” Ranneberger wrote. “Others have noted the AG’s poor quality of legal advice to the government that helped to facilitate both the Anglo-Leasing and Goldenberg mega-scandals by lending his stamp of approval to fraudulent contracts that were the basis for stealing over a billion dollars from the Kenyan government,” added Ranneberger. “It is his ability to obfuscate and confuse while giving an appearance of action that has so successfully stymied the prosecution of Kenya’s many mega-scandals.

It is a skill that has kept him in office, provided him with personal rewards, and served to damage both Kenya’s movement toward a stable democracy and U.S. interests in that same stable democracy,” wrote Ranneberger. He said Wako “in a pattern of supporting Kenya’s culture of impunity” had been identified by the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Arbitrary or Summary Executions in Kenya as the chief obstacle to prosecuting anyone in authority for extrajudicial executions.

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