{"id":11172,"date":"2018-08-11T18:26:40","date_gmt":"2018-08-11T18:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=11172"},"modified":"2018-08-11T18:26:40","modified_gmt":"2018-08-11T18:26:40","slug":"kenya-officials-accused-of-corruption-in-flagship-rail-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=11172","title":{"rendered":"Kenya: Officials accused of corruption in flagship rail project"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Kenyan authorities have arrested several senior officials on suspicion<\/span>\u00a0of corruption<\/a> over their management of a flagship $3.2bn railway project.<\/p>\n

The National Prosecution Authority said<\/a> in a statement on Saturday that it had agreed to charge 14 civil servants and business people, as well as three companies,\u00a0<\/span>over compensation for land purchased for the construction of the Chinese-funded line\u00a0linking the capital, Nairobi, to the coastal city of Mombasa.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among those indicted were\u00a0<\/span>Mohammed Abdalla Swazuri, chairman of the National Land Commission (NLC), and Atanas Kariuki Maina,\u00a0managing director of the Kenya Railways Corporation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

#BreakingNews<\/a> #anticorruption_odpp<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/DLoFTiqXPa<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 ODPP_KE (@ODPP_KE) August 11, 2018<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The charges followed an investigation\u00a0by the\u00a0Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC)\u00a0<\/span>into allegations the NLC made phoney compensation payments for land used for the project.<\/span><\/p>\n

The commission did not reveal the source of the allegations.<\/p>\n

Major project<\/h2>\n

Opened in May 2017, the Nairobi-Mombasa line is\u00a0part of a “master plan” agreed on by East African leaders to connect Kenya<\/a>,\u00a0Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda,\u00a0Burundi, South Sudan and Ethiopia by rail.<\/p>\n

It also forms part of China’s\u00a0<\/span>“One Belt, One Road” initiative, a multibillion-dollar series of infrastructure projects upgrading land and maritime trade routes between China and Europe, Asia and Africa.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beijing’s\u00a0Export-Import Bank has funded 90 percent of the project’s costs, while its\u00a0<\/span>state-owned Road and Bridges Corporation is in charge of maintaining and operating the railway.<\/p>\n

No Chinese companies or individuals were accused of financial misdealing during the railway’s construction.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta<\/a> has repeatedly pledged to stamp out corruption in the country, which was\u00a0ranked<\/a>\u00a0143rd out of 180 in Transparency International’s 2017\u00a0corruption perceptions index.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In May,\u00a054 people – including dozens of civil servants – and 10 business entities were accused<\/a> of stealing\u00a0almost $80m\u00a0<\/span>from Kenya’s National Youth Service.<\/p>\n

Two months earlier, a report by Auditor General Edward Ouko\u00a0revealed<\/a>\u00a0almost\u00a0$400m of public funds cannot be accounted for by the government.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kenyan authorities have arrested several senior officials on suspicion\u00a0of corruption over their management of a flagship $3.2bn railway project. The National Prosecution Authority said in a statement on Saturday that it had agreed to charge 14 civil servants and business people, as well as three companies,\u00a0over compensation for land purchased for the construction of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":11173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}