Business Daily (Nairobi)
1 December 2011
editorial
That Kenya has been named among the countries with the highest level of economic crime in the latest global survey may be of little surprise to many. Anyone who works for a private corporation or government has at least once in a year come across a blatant case of fraud in which millions of shillings belonging to the public or private investors are lost.
Whether one is talking about corruption in tendering for public contracts or use of technology to siphoning money from a bank, economic crime has risen to near catastrophic proportions in Kenya.
One only needs to look at the numbers to understand how damaging economic crime has become to the country’s common aspirations and progress.
The Anti-Fraud unit of the Kenya Police has reported that Kenyan banks ( and there are only about 45 of them) lose and average of Sh700 million to fraudsters every month.
This means that in one year, the economy loses Sh8.4 billion to banking fraudsters alone. That is money that could finance the free primary education programme for nearly a whole year and many times larger than annual budgetary allocations to a number of government ministries.
Add on this the billions that are lost in the rampant trade in counterfeit goods, over-invoicing of government, fake land deals and creative accounting and the number rises to tens of billions of shillings lost to economic crimes.
For many Kenyans, the strange thing may not be that tonnes of money is being lost in these criminal channels, but in the fact that it is not possible to see this by the number of criminals fighting their cases in court or serving their term in jails.
Instead, the Kenyan society, including the official government machinery charged with fighting the crimes appear to have all gone into a conspiracy of lethargy and silence.
In corporate Kenya, many rogue employees steal millions from their employers, get caught and sacked but none of it goes to the courts.
Though many business owners or managers will argue that going to the court exposes their organisations to reputational risks, failing to punish such criminals only serves to embolden like-minded individuals to follow in the footsteps of the thieves ahead exposing their employers to even greater losses .
It for this reason that one can boldly say that only bold action will save Kenya from topping such dubious lists and become a country that uses its resources efficiently.
AllAfrica – All the Time