WITH THE CURRENT WORLD FINANCIAL CRISIS, THIEVING BILLIONAIRES ARE IN FOR A SHOCK

By Jerry Okungu
Hargeisa, Somaliland
April 12, 2009

Many interesting developments are taking place in our region on the corruption front. There are signs that finally the chickens are coming home to roost. Political leaders are actually resigning over corruption allegations or quitting their cabinet posts in protest against impunity that their heads of government are afraid to deal with.

It first started with Paul Kagame loathing corruption to the extent that anybody suspected or rumored to have been fraudulent or abused his or her office for personal gain was sure to end behind bars for a long time pending investigations.

Then followed the turmoil that rocked the Tanzanian government in early 2008 when nearly the entire cabinet, led by the Prime Minister lost their jobs on account of corruption scandals. To date the Kikwete government has not recovered fully from intermittent allegations of either cover- ups in public offices or failure to fairly prosecute perpetrators of this international vice.

In Kenya, the story is different. Our politicians from both sides of the political divide have perfected the art of condemning corruption in village funerals or at best engaging in blame game without prosecuting and jailing a single hotshot since 1992 when the first known major corruption scandal was organized and carried out at the nation’s Central Bank.

That 1992 heist was sanctioned and supervised by none other than the then Vice President, his successive Treasury permanent secretaries and the Governor of the Central Bank. It did not matter that Kenya lost the equivalent of US $ 6 Billion then. To date, the same characters and their conduits are still walking the streets of Nairobi, free men with the then Vice President still comfortably sitting in the present cabinet nearly two decades later.

Next door in Uganda, things seem to be taking a new twist, very much to the discomfort of fat cats fond of enriching themselves with public funds, sometimes donated by the international community to alleviate the suffering among us.

Last week , a Ugandan court claimed one of its victims by sending to jail for 28 years, a man who was appointed by Yoweri Museveni to oversee the proper utilization of the Global Funds for HIV and AIDS. In the man’s primitiveness or wisdom, Teddy Seezi Cheeye decided to form his own NGO through which he could siphon millions of dollars to his private accounts while faking everything from receipt books to vehicle number plates!

The pleasing case about Uganda is that the two already convicted thieves will serve a total of 33 years in jail while at the same time they will refund the looted funds to the Ugandan public.

Some Ugandans have been quick to condemn the court decision as punitive and selective. Let me inform them that they are better off than their neighbors in the East of Lake Victoria. At least Museveni‘s regime has sacrificed one high profile thief that should serve as a warning to other wannabe get-rich-quickly public pests.

The story gets better when the G20 meeting in London recently decided that enough was enough with safe haven offshore accounts that had provided fodder for international criminals and state crooks that for decades had deprived their nationals of the much needed resources for their countries’ development.

And now that the notorious Swiss banks have decided to remove the lid off secret accounts they have been holding since World War II, it remains to be seen how our known public thieves will react when the contents of their accounts will be laid bare to the entire world community. Will they disown such funds or what? If they choose to defend such acquisitions, will they tell us more how they acquired such massive wealth in the time they were in power? Or will they as usual dismiss such revelations as the work of disgruntled elements out to smear their good names?
This latest development reminds me of 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The fall did not just affect the reunification of the two Germanys. It ignited the fall of the entire Soviet Empire. All those East European States that formed the Soviet Union disintegrated overnight. Dictators that hitherto had looked up to the Kremlin for direction and protection crumbled like a house of cards.
Africa too bore the brunt of this wind of change.

Suddenly, small dictators that used to operate under the armpits of opposing super powers found themselves without shelter. The Mobutus, Mois and Mengitsus of Africa suddenly found that their old allies were now demanding accountability and democratization from them!

Who could have imagined that an American regime would lift a finger against Joseph Mobutu or Daniel arap Moi, their traditional allies against Communism for decades?
As the curtain came down on world dictators 20 years ago, so will it come down on our thieving rulers in 2009.

jerryokungu@gmail.com