Order sought on Uhuru assets

ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda now wants judges in the Uhuru Kenyatta case to declare that Kenya has refused to give her details of his financial status.

In her latest filing to the Trial Chamber V(b), Ms Bensouda claims the government’s reluctance to provide financial records of the accused may affect the case in which Mr Kenyatta is accused of financing perpetrators of the 2008 post-poll violence.

“These records are relevant to critical issues in this case, and may shed light on the scope of the accused’s conduct, including the allegation that he financed the crimes with which he is charged,” she wrote to Presiding Judge Kuniko Ozaki and colleagues Robert Fremr and Chile Eboe-Osuji.

The Prosecutor argues that her office has made “repeated” requests to the government to produce the financial records, but Kenya has either been ambiguous in its responses or simply stone-walled the process.

“For 19 months, the OTP’s repeated requests have been met with obfuscation and intransigence. The net effect of the GoK’s (Government of Kenya) inaction has been to limit the body of evidence available to the Chamber, hindering its fact-finding function and ability to determine the truth.

It has also limited the OTP’s ability to investigate all the facts in this case under Article 54(1),” says the prosecutor.

The judges are expected to issue a final decision after receiving responses from the defence and victims’ lawyers.

But Ms Bensouda has indicated that she wants a declaration that Kenya has refused to cooperate in issuing the financial statements.

She first asked for Mr Kenyatta’s past financial records in April last year and when she came to Nairobi in October last year.

She argues that she pushed for the same before then President Kibaki.

In one of the responses, Kenya is said to have told her that any financial records of individuals must be accompanied with a court order to “fulfil this request”, but remained ambiguous on the parts that required such an order.

The prosecutor filed a complaint before the court in May.

Kenya, however, responded that the information would take longer because it “must be collated from various sources within and outside the government” and that consent must be obtained from relevant individuals.

“The records request remains outstanding to date, and the GoK has not produced any of the information sought therein,” the ICC prosecutor says.