On Thursday, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), together with other anti-corruption stakeholders including the Office of the Attorney General (AG), Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP), and Transparency International Kenya (TI-Kenya), made submissions before the National Assembly’s Justice and Legal Affairs Committee (JLAC) opposing a retrogressive anti-corruption bill proposed by Mbeere North MP Geoffrey Kariuki Ruku, which the agencies consider dangerous and a backward step in the fight against corruption.
The Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes (Amendment) Bill, 2023 seeks to delete from the law two key corruption offenses that exist to protect public funds from embezzlement and to enforce accountability among the public officials involved in the administration of public resources. The targetted provisions are under section 45(2)(b)&(c) of the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act, 2003.
EACC
Hon. Geoffrey Kariuki Ruku, the sponsor of the bill, argues that the objective is to “strengthen” the fight against corruption by “removing undue criminalization of procurement flaws,” which, in his view, could be adequately dealt with through administrative action. The Ruku Bill also seeks to delete from the law an offense arising from the initiation of unplanned projects (with no budget) in the national and county governments.
The EACC team, led by Director of Legal Services & Asset Recovery David Too, told the Parliamentary Committee that the Ruku Bill potentially mutilates the legal framework for the fight against corruption.
EACC maintains that if enacted as proposed, the amendments will remove essential mechanisms for enforcing accountability for public resources and create legal escape routes for perpetrators of corruption, thus opening a floodgate of corruption scandals in the country.
