Corruption crackdown at Nyayo House nets four
Nyayo House, Nairobi. Interior CS Kithure Kindiki has been compelled by pressure from all corners of society to commit to cracking down on Nyayo House graft cartels.
What you need to know:
- A network of brokers is said to have helped corrupt immigration officials collect money from desperate Kenyans seeking to speed up their passport applications.
Detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations have arrested four suspects in the ongoing crackdown on corrupt officials at the Immigration Department.
The four, Josphat Khamadi Manyonyi, Howard Tsimbagi alias Button, Ahmed Ibrahim Sheikh and Hassan Mohamed Hosman, were arrested on Friday last week and their mobile phones confiscated for analysis.
The suspects are alleged to be brokers who hang around immigration offices in Nairobi, soliciting bribes from Kenyans in cahoots with immigration officials.
They were detained at Central Police Station pending their arraignment on charges of preparing to commit a crime and conspiracy to defraud unsuspecting members of the public.
Their phones are being analysed to see if they are linked to a criminal network of immigration officials who steal from Kenyans seeking passports at Nyayo House.
The arrests comes ahead of an impending shake-up that is expected to rid the department of corrupt cartels.
A network of brokers is said to have helped corrupt immigration officials collect money from desperate Kenyans seeking to speed up their passport applications.
Some are said to have received the money via mobile after negotiating the price with the officials.
These are some of the criminal activities that have led to a backlog of unprocessed passports at the Interior Ministry, which currently stands at 58,000.
The department has increased staff to help clear the backlog by processing at least 5,000 a day and has set up a special counter for emergency situations such as medical, school or work.
The ongoing crackdown follows the admission by Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki that corruption was deeply entrenched in the immigration offices.
The CS revealed that the offices have been linked to the country's security challenges, including terrorism, making it a giant crime scene that he has vowed to clean up and get services running normally.
"If necessary, we will seal the building and call it a crime scene because I have sometimes made very spontaneous visits there at very odd hours and as early as 6am you will find Kenyans queuing all the way to the Teleposta Towers, you know it's a bad image," he told Parliament.
Prof Kindiki said plans were underway to ensure that passport applications are processed within a week, with the hope of reducing this to three days in the future in the event of an emergency.
"We are going to clean Nyayo House of corruption and all sorts of crimes. There are good officers there who are serving the country very patriotically, but there are a few who are the problem, who are collecting bribes and harassing the people of Kenya to get bribes that they should be getting for free and as their right," he added.
