A marathon public inquiry into Kenya’s biggest financial scandal was adjourned indefinitely on Tuesday following last week’s high court order to have several people, including retired president Daniel arap Moi, testify before it wraps up business.
On Friday, a three-judge bench ordered more than 1 500 people, most of them former top governement officials, to testify before the commission probing the so-called Goldenberg affair, that had finished receiving evidence.
The chairman of the inquiry, Justice Samuel Bosire, adjourned the sitting, saying the High Court court had given a ”tall order.”
”This is a tall order and requires a lot of resources. If that is anything to go by, we need at least five years to conclude… We don’t think we have those resources,” Bosire said.
”We have decided to adjourn generally until we decide on the way forward. Those are our orders,” Bosire added.
The 20-month commission is probing the Goldenberg scandal, a fictitious export scheme which cost Kenyans anything from hundreds of millions to around $3-billion.
The Goldenberg International company is accused of receiving payments for diamond and gold exports during Moi’s rule under a government scheme designed to revitalise Kenya’s faltering economy in the early 1990s by offering exporters a premium to repatriate their hard currency earnings. – Sapa-AFP