President Uhuru Kenyatta relies on confidential reports prepared by the National Intelligence Service to wage his new ruthless war against corruption, as the government begins unprecedented vetting of senior officials.
The government will also rely heavily on the Auditor General’s reports, as indications of financial indiscipline, to root out graft and nail corrupt procurement chiefs, accounting officers, and unscrupulous traders.
The Jubilee administration previously has criticised Auditor General Edward Ouko for his zeal in identifying myriad financial improprieties.
On Madaraka Day last Friday, Uhuru announced fresh vetting plans for top accounting and procurement officers — complete with polygraph or lie-detector tests — to be carried out by the end of this month.
Heads will roll and they will include senior officials, he said.
Employing such technology to fight corruption is a first by the Kenyan government. The augmented graft war means that both the masterminds of graft and their networks, the big and small fish, could be demolished soon.
"Those who shall fail the vetting will stand suspended," Uhuru announced, saying that corrupt officials must be put in jail.
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Procurement departments in the government and state parastatals are known as citadels of sleaze, as many officers dish out lucrative contracts for inflated sums and receive huge kickbacks.
The Star has established that for weeks now, the NIS has trained its sights on government departments and well-funded parastatals with budgets in the multi-billion shillings.
Some of the departments are essential to implement the Big Four Agenda — healthcare, manufacturing, food security and affordable housing — that the President is hoping will secure his legacy, with only four years before he leaves office.
Left out in some of the latest big investigations, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission is hurriedly completing a high-profile case to redeem its image and demonstrate that it is not toothless, the Star has learnt.
The upcoming scandal could claim a Cabinet Secretary and other big names. The investigation files will be sent to DPP Noordin Haji by tomorrow.
"The files were just about to be dispatched on Thursday, but there were some small technical things that were still pending and unfortunately Friday was a public holiday," a source close to the investigation said.
The NIS is working alongside a multi-agency team quietly assembled by President Kenyatta to crack down on graft. The spy agency is at the centre of its operations.
Deputy head of Public Service Wanyama Musiambo, Kenyatta’s new anti-graft czar at State House, is one of many senior bureaucrats on the team.
Sources have told the star that NIS director general Phillip Kameru, who sits on the National Security Council, has been briefing the President regularly.
Kameru is a former director of the Kenya Defence Forces’ Military Intelligence.
He is seen as the shadowy figure behind the arrests on corruption charges of Public Service Principal Secretary Lillian Mbogo Omollo and NYS director general Richard Ndubai.
Ndubai and Omollo among more than awaiting tomorrow’s bail hearing in connection with the NYS loss of Sh468 million.
"There is panic in government because the NIS is everywhere. People are being tracked right from Cabinet Secretaries," a highly placed source in the government told the Star.
Last month, NIS uncovered the rot in the NYS. Beleaguered Omollo accused Kameru of exaggerating the amount suspected to have been lost.
"All the vouchers submitted for investigations to the DCI amount to a total of Sh900 million. This is not even remotely close to the Sh8 billion figure that the Director-General of NIS is claiming is lost or stolen," Omollo said on May 12, in a memo to her boss, Margaret Kobia.
However, speaking to the Star yesterday, security expert Mwenda Mbijiwe said the spy agency had only just awakened because of pressure from the President.
"They are more reactive than proactive in dealing with corruption. Like any Kenyan prone to corruption, the NIS is also prone to corruption. If the NIS was working to fight corruption, then they could have picked it before it happened," Mbijiwe said.
On Friday Uhuru pledged that the war on graft would be relentless.
The new polygraph weapon measures and records physiological indices such as blood pressure, pulse, and respiration when a person is questioned. It notes the anomalies.
It's not clear how many heads of procurement and accounts are targetted in the new vetting expected to take no more than 60 days.
Yesterday, government spokesman Eric Kiraithe said he could not respond to queries about the vetting, as he was out of the country.
The vetting team will rely on audit and other reports in the fresh screening.
The Auditor General has previously exposed flawed procurement processes, general disregard for the public’s resources and outright theft.
Anomalies and irregularities were cited in audits of the National Social Security Fund, Geothermal Development Corporation, Kenya Pipeline Company, Kenya Airports Authority, and Uwezo Fund.
Investigations are underway into Kenya Power, Kenya Pipeline, and the National Cereals and Produce Board.
Ironically, the government was initially hostile to Ouko and accused him of reducing the annual audit exercise "to a ritual for tainting the integrity of public offices and a national executive committed to good governance."
On October 18, 2016, Uhuru publicly criticised Ouko’s plans to travel to Europe to investigate the Eurobond. He said that he himself had done everything possible to fight graft.
The new political unity between Uhuru and Opposition chief Raila Odinga has also given impetus to the anti-graft war.
Yesterday, Raila reiterated that he fully backs the ongoing crackdown on individual state officers and business people over what he termed the loss of billions of shillings in public funds.
"Mr Odinga remains committed to aiding the war on corruption from a wide and common front so as to remove any sanctuary where perpetrators can seek refuge as spelt out in the Building Bridges to the New Kenyan Nation... He agrees that communities and parties don’t steal, only individuals do," Raila’s spokesman Dennis Onyango said.
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