THE controversial Sh250 billion Eurobond saga may finally get US President Barack Obama’s attention – negatively turning the spotlight on Kenya on the global stage as a haven of graft.
This is after Kenyans yesterday started the process of petitioning Obama to help in the recovery of what they termed as “looted Eurobond proceeds” with the aid of US banks.
In the petition being signed on the White House website, Kenyans said Obama should order US Attorney General Loretta Lynch to unlock the Sh250 billion Eurobond deal.
“We petition the Obama Administration to have US AG Loretta Lynch help Kenyans recover their looted Eurobond proceeds,” part of the petition reads.
The move is likely to give Cord leader Raila Odinga more political fodder as he takes on President Uhuru Kenyatta in what he has termed a fight against the “grand robbery of Kenya”.
Raila has said at least Sh100 billion cannot be accounted for in the Eurobond deal.
For the petition to get to Obama, it must secure at least 100,000 signatures, according to details on the website.
By about 6pm yesterday, only 157 people had signed, but the signatures were coming in fast and furious.
The petitioners alleged that $999 million was not transferred to Kenya from top US banks that handled the Eurobond proceeds, contrary to information provided by National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich.
“An amount of 999 million US dollars has to date not been deposited into the Consolidated Fund as required by law,” the petition claimed.
“We reach out to the Attorney General knowing well that United States President Barack Obama, who visited Kenya last year, asked the youth to step up and take their place in society and a US bank is involved in this scandal.”
The petition came just a day after veteran journalist Sarah Elderkin published an explosive two-part article about the foreign loan and called on the US Department of Justice to get to the bottom of the matter.
Elderkin, a close confidant of Raila’s and his biographer, described the Eurobond deal as a billion-dollar heist and insisted that Sh100 billion has never been transferred from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
When he visited Kenya, President Obama talked tough and urged President Kenyatta to root out corruption, saying the nation was “at a crossroads” between promise and peril.
“Too often here in Kenya corruption is tolerated because that’s how it’s always been done,” Obama said, calling corruption an “anchor” that is weighing down the nation’s otherwise bright future.
In a joint commitment to promote good governance and anti-corruption efforts, Obama gave his assurances to help Kenya combat corruption.
“The two Governments reaffirm their shared objectives to improve governance by increasing transparency and accountability in government, and commit to work together to combat corruption in Kenya," the agreement reads.