Former Presidential candidate Martha Karua has revealed how President Mwai Kibaki’s administration fought to block a report by then Opposition leader Uhuru Kenyatta on the Anglo Leasing scandal.
Karua who was speaking in an exclusive interview with KTN’s Point blank lifted the lid on how powerful Government operatives hatched a plot to starve Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee of money to block Uhuru, who was chair of the committee, from travelling to London to interview former Governance and Ethics Permanent Secretary John Githongo on the multi-billion-shilling scam.
She said that even after Uhuru had been facilitated to gather evidence about the scandal that shook Kibaki’s administration to the core, another plot was hatched to have the report rejected in Parliament.
The Anglo Leasing scam saw the country lose an estimated Sh50 billion after security-related contracts were awarded to companies that failed to honour their part of the deals.
Karua – who was the Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister – further revealed how she approached former Finance Minister David Mwiraria (now deceased) and urged him to resign to save Kibaki’s administration from collapse as public pressure mounted over the scandal.
The former powerful minister also recalled how the Cabinet prevailed on Senator Moses Wetang’ula – then Foreign Affairs Minister – to resign over the Tokyo Embassy scandal.
The embassy scandal was exposed after investigations revealed that Treasury officials had allegedly decided to purchase property at an inflated price from a private seller instead of buying from the Japanese Government, which had offered a lower price.
Mr Wetang’ula was later reinstated after he was cleared of the corruption claims.“When the opposition, led by none other than Uhuru Kenyatta, was pushing the Government because of the Anglo Leasing scandal, I had to advise Kibaki as the minister of Justice.
I first went to my Cabinet colleague Mwiraria, who was handling Treasury, and told him that the Government was going to collapse.
“People were annoyed, including members of the President’s party. The whole country was upset. The opposition was baying for our blood. There was a move to starve the parliamentary committee of money so that Uhuru and the Public Accounts Committee could not go to London. I told them we cannot do that so he was facilitated and did a report.”