PAC summons top officials over Anglo Leasing

• Treasury hard pressed to explain status of the contracts.
• House team summons AG Wako, the Kacc director Aaron Ringera and Justice minister Mutula Kilonzo to shed light on the matter.

The ghost of the multi-billion Anglo Leasing scandal resurfaced Wednesday during an inquiry by a parliamentary watchdog committee.

Treasury officials who appeared before the House team were hard-pressed to explain the status of five contracts that have since been classified as cancelled.

It emerged that despite a written request to the Attorney General, Mr Amos Wako, seeking to have the contracts officially cancelled, no reply had been filed with the Treasury.

Shed light

As a result, the House team has summoned Mr Wako, the Kenya Anti Corruption Commission chief Aaron Ringera and Justice minister Mutula Kilonzo to shed light on the matter.

The three have 21 days to compile a report on the status of the Anglo Leasing inquiry, the state of promissory notes given out with the contracts and the cost of litigation following the scam.

The Public Accounts Committee, which first probed the scandal and submitted a report to Parliament in March 2006, sought to know the total amount of money spent in the litigation process.

PAC chairman Boni Khalwale (also Ikolomani MP), Gichugu MP Martha Karua together with Bonchari MP Charles Onyancha fired the first salvo when they demanded proof that the contracts were cancelled.

It is then that Finance Secretary Mutua Kilaka asked the deputy director in the debt management department, Mr Haron Sirima, to respond.

Mr Sirima told the committee that Treasury had written to the AG but had never gotten a reply as to whether the contracts had been cancelled.

“We have been treating it as “cancelled” pending a reply from the AG’s office,” Mr Sirima said.

He said there were two cases pending in foreign courts relating to the saga in the United Kingdom and in Switzerland over the breach of contract. However, he said, the government was contemplating an out-of-court settlement to handle the matter.

It is this that attracted the ire of Ms Karua, a former Justice minister, who insisted that without “sufficient paperwork” to show that the contracts had been cancelled, then the Kenyan taxpayer was going to foot the bills of the security contracts.

“We’ve got to stop this circus once and for all,” said the Gichugu MP who recently joined the PAC after she quit the Cabinet.

Ms Karua said an audit report on the saga --by PricewaterhouseCoopers-- had “simply termed all the contracts as fraudulent.”

Ms Karua said Mr Wako’s office was keen to ensure that the multibillion saga will not hound the AG out of office.

Culpability

She hinted at the AG’s culpability in the scheme given his position as the government’s legal advisor: “If I am the one who made a mistake, I may not be able to correct it.”