Kenya’s Anti-Corruption Police Unit (ACPU) have interrogated officials of Kenya’s Euro-Bank, which collapsed last week, taking with it billions of shillings of depositors’ money, an ACPU official said on Thursday.
”We recorded statements late Wednesday from four top officials of the bank, including its chairman and managing director, on the whereabouts of the depositors money,” ACPU representative Kaplich Baristo told AFP by telephone.
”They will soon be summoned for further questioning before a decision is made to charge them in court for abuse of office and embezzlement of public funds,” Baristo added.
Euro-Bank, a small institution owned by individuals who were well connected politically to members of former president Daniel arap Moi’s regime, was liquidated last Friday by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) after it was found to be insolvent.
”Among the issues raised during the interrogation was the whereabouts of 256 million shillings ($3,3-million) deposit from the National Social Security Fund
(NSSF) and another 421 million from the state-owned Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH),” Baristo said.
Moi was ousted in elections in late December, won by former opposition leader Mwai Kibaki and his National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) alliance. Kibaki had hinged his campaign on fighting rampant corruption, and turning around Kenya’s flagging economic and social fortunes, blaming them on 39 years of misrule under Moi’s Kenya African National Union (Kanu) party.
Apart from individual depositors’ money, the bank collapsed with deposits running into billions of shillings from several other state corporations, allegedly banked fraudlently.
The loss of the bank has this week been the subject of hot debate in the Kenyan parliament, with members demanding that bank officials be prosecuted immediately and the money recovered. – Sapa-AFP