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Kenya: Who is Fooling Who Over Grand Regency Saga?
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Business Daily (Nairobi)
EDITORIAL
23 April 2008
Posted to the web 23 April 2008
Attorney-General Amos Wako should not hide behind polemics on the Grand Regency Hotel saga.
After years of mastering the art of survival any time the Goldenberg mess is brought back to us, Wako is never short of answers.
But that is not the issue. Our worry is that senior government officials are reading from different scripts and are not comparing notes. There seems to be a lot of shadow-boxing, back-stabbing and pure irresponsibility over the Grand Regency saga.
This week we have been treated to a circus as opposing investor interests used the media to push their agenda.
The import of all these is that a hotel built with money siphoned from Central Bank could turn nasty if not handled in a transparent manner.
The importance of transparency while transacting government business is of cardinal importance because this is a way of protecting fairness and ensuring the common good.
The Grand Regency remains a symbol of the Goldenberg scam but has turned to be a cash cow for some individuals and a big test for us to tackle corruption.
Yesterday, and covered elsewhere in this paper, the Governor of Central Bank said that the bank has not received money from the hotel for the last nine years. That is a scandal and somebody should be explaining the reasons.
If CBK has not received a penny from receiver managers since 1999 where did that money go? That is where Wako should come in. But he should not start playing ping-pong with our brains.
At the moment the Indian and Libyan investors are interested in the vacant plots along Nairobi's Loita Street where they want to develop shopping malls and hotels. This is the kind of investment that will make this area have a new face.
Global politics are coming to the fore and also local interests are also getting caught. In the confusion, a public asset could end up in people's hands at a throw-away price.
But as they jostle for a stake in the Grand Regency, now that Kamlesh Pattni has washed his hands off, it is upon public officers handling the would-be-sale to do it in a transparent manner.
At the moment, fear of a secret transfer of ownership of the Grand Regency raised a lot of dust and interest which shows that the public is watching every move interested parties are taking.
Grand Regency, as the Director of the Kenya Anti Corruption Commission said, is one of the biggest assets ever recovered in Kenya that had been improperly obtained.
When such an asset is recovered, the public has every right to know and question any issue that they think would be going against the common good.
But there is something amiss between the CBK, the Attorney Generals office and the Kenya Anti Corruption Commission. Are they working in tandem to safeguard Kenyans interests or does the right hand not know what the left hand is up to?
We would imagine the two are always in constant touch with each other as one cannot succeed without the other in the war against graft.
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So, why was the A-G left in the dark when the Grand Regency was changing hands, yet we would want to believe that by virtue of being the chief government legal advisor, he should have been consulted to give the green light as to the legality of the transfer.
Such kinds of mishaps are what breeds grounds for suspicion and graft allegations. It is a road we have been to and we would not want to go there again.
The Grand Regency sale should not be another circus and we need to be vigilante not to have another Goldenberg or Anglo-Leasing scandal with us.
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