The government’s failure to publish regulations that will govern the use of assets seized from criminals is a serious abdication of duty that must now come to an end.
For years, agencies have seized billions of shillings’ worth of cash and other assets believed to be proceeds of crime, including money laundering and corruption.
Some of the assets have been proven to have been seized legitimately, meaning that they should be available for use by the government to fund its programmes.
Shockingly, the regulations that should have been published to operationalise the Criminal Assets Recovery Fund are lacking.
This has seen the Assets Recovery Agency (ARA) hold the seized cash, vehicles, properties and other assets without any economic benefit accruing to the public so far.
In the case of cash, the money is simply being held in an account at KCB Bank Kenya. Other assets are simply frozen in the absence of the regulations.
A High Court judge has called out the Treasury for this inertia which defeats one of the key purposes of going after financial and related crimes – the use of the assets for public good.
The judge noted that the status quo opens an opportunity for the assets to be misappropriated and denies the government access to the resources. It is not clear, for instance, whether the bank deposits are earning interest.
The judge has ordered the Treasury to issue regulations to operationalise the fund. In the meantime, the court also asked ARA to be depositing seized cash at the Treasury.
The best solution is for the regulations to be issued to make the investigation, seizure and appropriation of criminal proceeds a seamless and efficient process.
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