US envoy wanted visa bans for Ringera and Kosgey

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.