Part 2: Like Kabila and dos Santos, Kenya’s Corrupt Officials Can Run but Will Not Hide

Nairobi, October 10 – In Kinshasa, a courtroom fell silent last Tuesday as former Congolese president Joseph Kabila was sentenced to death for embezzlement and money laundering. The judgment, based on court papers detailing how billions vanished through shell companies and family networks that fed off state coffers, sent shockwaves far beyond the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Over eight hundred kilometers south, in Angola, the late President José Eduardo dos Santos, who died in exile in 2022, left behind children still entangled in corruption cases after the “Luanda Leaks” exposed how public oil wealth was siphoned into private empires.

For many Kenyans, the downfall of these once-untouchable leaders feels both familiar and distant, familiar because of Nairobi’s long history of financial scandals, yet distant because accountability here remains more imagined than real. Kenya’s rising public debt, which is now estimated by the National Treasury at KSh 12 trillion, continues to feed private fortunes and political power has become a gateway for plunder. But now with the mighty fall of Kabila and dos Santos, a quiet fear now lingers in Nairobi’s corridors of power that the country may be edging toward its own day of reckoning.

The blueprint of plunder: From Goldenberg to Anglo Leasing

The architecture of Kenya’s financial capture is not new; it has been methodically refined over decades. The pattern first crystallized in the 1990s through the Goldenberg scandal, which the Bosire Commission of Inquiry later described as “a calculated fraud of monumental proportions.” The scheme, built on falsified gold and diamond export compensation sanctioned at the highest levels, siphoned an estimated KSh 158 billion (about 10 percent of Kenya’s GDP then) from public coffers. It triggered a currency collapse and set the economy on stagnation for years. At its core was businessman Kamlesh Pattni, who exploited a legitimate export incentive to create a paper empire of profit.

In the early 2000s, barely a decade later, the Anglo Leasing affair followed the same design, only more sophisticated. Eighteen security-related contracts worth over KSh 50 billion were awarded to phantom firms with no operational existence. British investigators and Kenya’s parliamentary committees later established that the companies were registered offshore, with payments routed through accounts in Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Anglo Leasing institutionalized what Goldenberg had pioneered: a system where public procurement became the principal tool for political financing and elite enrichment.

Fast-forward to 2021, when the Pandora Papers exposed offshore companies secretly controlled by the Kenyatta family, holding assets worth millions of dollars. Unlike Goldenberg or Anglo Leasing, this was not a direct raid on the treasury but the matured face of an old habit, political power enabling private capital flight under the cover of opaque financial jurisdictions. The leaks confirmed what earlier scandals had foreshadowed: the transformation of state power into a conduit for private accumulation.

This evolution in Kenya closely mirrors the systems perfected by its continental counterparts. In Angola, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) found that “a constellation of European consulting firms, banks and lawyers helped the Angolan president’s daughter [Isabel dos Santos] build a business empire and channel millions of dollars in public funds into her own pockets.” In the DRC, the watchdog group The Sentry documented how “the Kabila family took advantage of weak regulation in the mineral sector to build a network of businesses that allowed them to profit far beyond Kabila’s tenure.”

So when Kabila was sentenced to death on 30 September, it reverberated far beyond Kinshasa. “Justice rendered in the name of the Congolese people gives satisfaction to its people,” declared prosecutor Richard Bondo who represented North Kivu and South Kivu regions in Kabila trial. His words carried a quiet warning across the continent, and through Nairobi’s corridors of power, that when a state turns power into private enterprise, the day the books are opened is inevitable, and the masks will fall.

The debt-fueled era: Mega-projects and phantom billions

Kenya’s modern phase of state capture has been supercharged by public debt. The country’s public debt crisis has become the central pillar of its political economy. Loans once sold as development fuel are now feeding a machine of patronage and opacity. Between 2013 and 2023, the national debt surged from KSh 1.9 trillion to over KSh 10.1 trillion. Yet the numbers do not add up: national accounts show that while the Kenya Revenue Authority collected KSh 13.4 trillion against KSh 14.7 trillion in expenditure, a gap of just KSh 1.3 trillion, the state borrowed a staggering KSh 7.2 trillion in the same period. The question that lingers is unsettling: where did the extra trillions go?

Economist David Ndii, long before joining President William Ruto’s administration, called it “a classic case of debt capture.” Kenya, he warned, was “borrowing not to build but to feed patronage networks.” Ironically, Ndii now advises a government accused of entrenching the same system he once condemned. “Once a state becomes addicted to borrowing for theft,” he wrote, “it cannot reform without crisis.”

That crisis may already be taking shape. Like Angola under dos Santos and Congo under Kabila, Kenya’s plunder now hides behind the language of progress. The same blueprint that turned oil and minerals into private wealth is unfolding through high interest commercial loan-funded “development.” Behind every glossy launch, the railways, dams, highways, hospitals, and even education reforms, lie opaque loans, inflated contracts, and offshore payments that transform national ambition into personal fortune.

Today, debt servicing consumes over 70 percent of government revenues, crowding out spending on education, healthcare, and local development. The pattern mirrors that of Kabila’s Congo, where billions in mining revenue were siphoned into offshore accounts while hospitals lacked syringes and personal protective equipment (PPEs).  Development has become debt, and debt the new currency of theft. The clearest example came in 2014, when Kenya floated its debut Eurobond.

Phantom projects and the missing billions

The Eurobond mystery: In 2014, Kenya raised KSh 263 billion (US$2 billion) in its debut Eurobond issue. Yet by 2016, Auditor-General Edward Ouko reported he could not trace the funds in government accounts. To this day, no comprehensive explanation has been made public for one of the largest inflows in the country’s history.

The Arror and Kimwarer dams: Valued at KSh 63 billion (US$490 million), these projects in Elgeyo-Marakwet were financed through foreign loans but never materialized. In 2019, then-Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich was charged with corruption. “The Kenyan public is servicing loans for projects that remain phantom,” prosecutors told the court. By 2020, President Uhuru Kenyatta canceled Kimwarer as “technically and financially unviable,” though billions had already been disbursed. Kenyans now service loans for dams that exist only on paper.

The Standard Gauge Railway (SGR): Costing KSh 657.5 billion (US$5 billion), it became Kenya’s most expensive infrastructure project. Yet the cost was nearly double that of comparable lines in Ethiopia and Tanzania. Court filings in 2020 revealed secretive “take-or-pay” clauses forcing the Kenya Ports Authority to guarantee cargo volumes regardless of usage. The High Court ruled that such secrecy violated constitutional principles of accountability.

Ouko later warned that corruption in Kenya had evolved from isolated scandals into a “budgeted enterprise.” His audits exposed systemic diversion built into the national budget, projects inflated or designed purely to justify borrowing. In report after report, Ouko flagged “unsupported expenditures,” “ghost payments”and“irregular procurements” worth hundreds of billions of shillings, many linked to large infrastructure schemes like the SGR. Despite the sleek locomotives, the railway bleeds losses each year, while locked taxpayers into decades of repayments for a project that might never break even.

That model of inflated, opaque contracting has since extended into new frontiers. In early 2023, the proposed takeover of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport by India’s Adani Group ignited public uproar, echoing the same scheme that underpinned the SGR. Civil society groups warned it risked mortgaging a key national asset through a secretive concession deal, lacking transparency and parliamentary oversight. The controversy unfolded just as Adani’s global empire faced turmoil following the Hindenburg Research exposé and subsequent U.S. regulatory scrutiny over alleged stock manipulation and accounting fraud. Under pressure, President Ruto’s administration quietly shelved the plan. But the episode laid bare how Kenya’s leadership continues to flirt with the very schemes perfected by Kabila and dos Santos – foreign-linked contracts sealed in secrecy and structured to enrich political elites at the expense of public interest.

The new frontiers of fiscal capture

As the old schemes matured, extraction moved into essential public services and digital systems, the new frontiers of capture.

The National Youth Service (NYS): In 2015 and 2018, the NYS scandals exposed deep corruption within youth empowerment programmes. In the first cycle, KSh 791 million vanished through fictitious supplies and fraudulent payments; three years later, nearly KSh 9 billion followed. The fraud was executed through the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS), the government’s digital payment platform that was meant to enhance transparency but was instead manipulated to authorize ghost suppliers and inflated invoices. What was designed to uplift youth became a cash cow for politically connected cartels, showing how technology itself had become another layer in Kenya’s machinery of corruption.

Health plunder: In 2024, Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu flagged KSh 104.8 billion (US$820 million) in irregular procurement under the new Social Health Authority,  the rebranded successor to National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF), warning Kenya risked being “locked into a long-term digital infrastructure whose costs and ownership remain opaque.” It echoed the NHIF and KEMSA COVID-19 scandals, where KSh 7.8 billion (US$60 million) disappeared. What was designed as a national health safety net has instead mutated into a rent-seeking pipeline, Kenya’s own version of Angola’s Sonangol, where oil profits once disappeared into elite coffers while public hospitals continue to crumble as Kenyans pay heavily with their lives.

Housing Levy circus: President Ruto’s flagship housing programme mirrors this pattern. Marketed as a solution to Kenya’s urban housing deficit, the housing project continues to draw parallels to past scandals cloaked in populist rhetoric.  Introduced under the Finance Act 2023, it deducts 1.5 percent from every worker’s pay, matched by employers. Though initially ruled unconstitutional, Parliament reintroduced it, and the courts allowed it to proceed. Critics argue the scheme risks morphing into a multibillion-shilling sinkhole, another public-private venture where the public carries the cost while politically connected developers reap the gains. Critics further, claim the project is quickly becoming a political tool ahead of 2027, with MoUs reserving 20 percent of units for teachers and promises to police and other groups. What was framed as social welfare now looks like a political carrot sustained by opaque contracting and poor oversighting.

Education: The education sector has also not been spared. From the experiments of new funding models to the audit reports that recently revealed over KSh 3.7 billion paid to ghost students and non-existent schools between 2020 and 2024. Of 83 sampled schools, the report said 14 did not exist but received KSh 16.6 billion, while six defunct ones got KSh 889,348. Thirteen schools that received Ksh.11 million during the audit period had registered names that differed from those captured in NEMIS. The Director of Audit in the Auditor General’s office, Justus Okumu further revealed a KSh 117 billion shortfall across real institutions. According to the audit, 354 secondary schools were overfunded by Ksh.3.5 billion, 99 junior secondary schools were overfunded by Ksh.30.8 billion, and 270 primary schools received an excess of Ksh.79.9 million, totaling Ksh.3.7 billion in overfunding. Systems like NEMIS, meant to enhance transparency, now enable theft.

eCitizen Heist: Just as Sonangol and Gécamines became shadow states within states, Kenya’s eCitizen platform has evolved into a digital replica. The Auditor-General’s 2023/24 report showed that of KSh 100.84 billion (US$770 million) collected, KSh 44.8 billion (US$340 million) could not be traced. Another KSh 7.05 billion (US$53 million) sat in accounts without service agreements, while KSh 2.57 billion (US$19 million) lacked matching invoices. A reform meant to streamline revenue has become a private treasury, echoing the resource ring fencing once perfected in Luanda and Kinshasa.

The political weaponization of debt and shrinking civic space

This fiscal capture continues to have far-reaching political consequences. Every borrowing cycle births new cartels, tender kings, and loyalties that tie politics to procurement. Parliament, once a fiscal watchdog, has turned into a stamp of approval for every executive’s decisions. The judiciary, underfunded and pressured, treads carefully around power. Debt has become a political weapon, a tool wielded to buy silence, fund loyalty, and punish dissent.

This erosion of accountability has been matched by the shrinking of civic space. The country remains legally open but politically fragile. Activists and journalists tracing corruption report surveillance, arrests, and smear campaigns. Many media houses, reliant on state advertising, have become muted. As UN Rapporteur Irene Khan noted last Tuesday, “Governments are tightening controls while shutting out scrutiny.” Kenya’s tactics now mirror those once used in Angola and Congo to shield grand corruption.

The fates of Kabila and dos Santos offer a warning written in real time. Both presided over resource-rich nations hollowed out by greed. When their regimes ended, their empires crumbled under the weight of exposure. Kenya’s own trajectory, from Goldenberg to Anglo-Leasing, from the Eurobond to the eCitizen heist, shows a similar anatomy. The amounts may differ, but the machinery is identical: public credit captured, citizens impoverished, elites enriched.

As senior Treasury official, speaking on condition of anonymity summarized the mechanism bluntly: “These deals are designed to fail on paper so they can succeed in theft. The debt is real, the projects are imaginary.”

The court verdict from Kinshasa and the ongoing probes in Luanda make one truth undeniable: impunity is not permanent. The math of Kenya’s debt and the ledger of its scandals already sketch the outline of a hollowed state. When the books are finally opened, as they were in Kinshasa, Nairobi may find its own balance sheet demanding a similar day of reckoning. As Kabila’s prosecutors put it, “Justice rendered in the name of the people gives satisfaction to its people.” Someday, Nairobi too may echo that sentiment. The only question left is when.

Note: This article was first published in The Standard  here