Barack Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize????

[Helen Reyes]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6123832.stm

Bank scam threatens Kenya economy

President Kibaki was voted in to tackle corruption

The government of Kenya is being accused of failing to act on evidence of an alleged banking fraud worth $1.5bn, dwarfing other recent scandals. The alleged scam, involving money laundering and tax evasion, was exposed by whistle-blowers as early as 2004. Investigators believe tax evasion and money laundering worth 10% of Kenya's national income are involved. A recent auditor's report says the scale of the operations "threatens the stability of the Kenyan economy".

The government is being accused of dragging its feet on the issue, but Finance Minister Amos Kimunya said the government was closing in on the perpetrators.

"I can assure you that we will be taking action within the law in as short a time as possible," he told the BBC.

But one of the key whistle-blowers, Titus Mwirigi, now in hiding in the United States, has questioned the commitment of a government, elected to power on an anti-corruption ticket. He told the BBC that virtually all of those hired to probe the operations at Charterhouse Bank Ltd have been moved off the case or have fled overseas. The auditor's report, which was seen by the BBC, has called for the bank's licence to be withdrawn, The BBC's Karen Allen in Nairobi says that for a government seeking re-election next year in a crucial presidential vote, this could be the final test of its willingness to take on powerful business interests.

https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/A_US%2...of_horrors

...Today CHB [Charter House Bank] stands accused of being at the centre of a complicated series of financial scams, tax evasion schemes and money laundering operations that saw billions of Kenyan shillings (hundreds of millions of US Dollars) expatriated from the country by unidentified persons. Close to 100 accounts have been investigated by Kenyan financial police, anti-corruption officials and the Central Bank itself. Questions have been asked in Parliament and by foreign diplomats, and at least two whistleblowers have fled the country to take up asylum in the USA. CHB was the subject of a special audit by the Government of Kenya published here for the first time. At stake is over 1.5 billion dollars worth of transactions, which dwarf most scandals in a country known for mega-corruption....