Elaborate and changing Eurobond story a pointer of grand corruption

I am a veteran of many scandals.

I was here when Goldenberg was unravelled and the curtain pulled aside to show us how greedy we really are.

I was here when Anglo Leasing had its cover blown by John Githongo and we saw the faces of the people who have impoverished our country and how the system protects them.

My nose for large-scale theft is as long as a rat’s. And now it is twitching a riot.

And like the rat, I am bred — by professional training, by almost two decades of being lied to — to regard my environment with a big degree of scepticism.

Sitting in my office on the third floor, I pride myself on being able to smell a liar, or a hatchet job, before it enters the lift on the ground floor.

Please allow me to go out on a limb.

Eurobond (Eurobonds?) and all that corruption business with the Ministry of Devolution and Planning is going to be the Anglo Leasing of the Jubilee administration.

Second proposition: Since the presidency appears to be in an advanced state of paralysis, there is some safety in assuming that not much is going to be done to investigate or catch the thieves and therefore, by that mere fact, the entire government will be involved in covering up grand corruption.

Third proposition: And flowing from the foregoing, if Jubilee retains power in 2017, it is not because it is in the circumstances deserving of another chance, but because the opposition is bure.

ISOLATING THE CRACKS
(Cord is like a tired English League team that goes into every season with the same tattered style of play, the same beyond-sell-by-date team, and the same battle-battered captain. They bring to the game many glories of the past, but no excitement of the moment or indeed the future. But I digress).

How do I know something is afoot?

In the savannah, you know there is a kill, not when you stumble upon the feeding lion, but from the flock of carrion eaters circling up in the sky.

You will have noticed that Jubilee’s rivals are like a starving man who has been fed a bowl of bone soup.

You can see the life flow back into their limbs.

And the opposition, most of it having spent its adult life in government, knows stuff we do not know.

Going back to the Eurobond and all that, I am by no means condemning the folk who work at Treasury or the Devolution Ministry.

I am merely isolating the cracks from which the smoke is pumping out.

The Eurobond story keeps evolving, changing, metastasising.

At the start we were told it was one bond of some Sh196 billion.

Apparently there are two of Sh250 billion. That is a hell of a lot of debt.

IMPORTANT QUESTION?
We were assured that the debt was being raised to pay off a bank loan incurred by the nusu mkate government and quite likely wasted on corrupt electoral procurement.

We were also told that some of the money would be used to finance mega-projects such as the railway.

We were told that it would bring down interest rates.

Now we are told the money was kept in offshore accounts, where it was controlled by only a few people.

We are also told that it was fed into the normal budget, though there is some debate as when it flowed into the formal government accounts.

At what point did the purpose of the Eurobond change from funding development to paying salaries?

This is the equivalent of surrendering your title deed at the bank to pay dowry for a fifth wife.

Of particular interest is the Sh45 billion that was given to the State Department of Planning, aka the Ministry of Devolution and Planning.

LARGE-SCALE CORRUPTION

I have made no headway in finding out what infrastructure projects were funded by that money.

I have heard rumours that the money could have been used for a household survey, though this might be just propaganda.

The use of that money must be explained.

Are we saying corruption is only at Devolution? Of course not.

It may not even be the most corrupt ministry, but, as a rule of thumb, big corruption, such as the theft of Sh790 million in cooked or fake tenders, takes place only when the thieves have the confidence of knowing that the big people have been compromised.

Can you prove my twitching nose wrong?