Panic has gripped Deputy President William Ruto’s camp as it has emerged that despite their tantrums and empty rhetoric, President Uhuru Kenyatta has kicked off the lifestyle audit exercise.
A multi-agency team that comprises the AG, National Intelligence Service (NIS), Director of Criminal Investigations, Anti-Money Laundering Unit, the Asset Recovery Agency, Banking Fraud Investigation unit, Financial Reporting Centre, Kenya Revenue Authority, Cyber-Crime Unit and Anti-Counterfeit Agency and that reports directly to President Kenyatta has adopted a secretive strategy in the audit.
In the operation, one is picked up till they are delivered to highly secure residences, where the panel of interrogators operate from.
Those who have endured the grilling say an individual is called and asked to report to a specific place armed only with his/her national identity card. There does not appear to be a specific schedule for calling, as the summons are seemingly made at random
In the Report Published in the Standard, the individual is directed to a waiting car, which then takes them to a private residence for grilling. The team is operating from several highly secured houses in different posh estates. The houses do not appear to be inhabited but are very well-maintained.
At the residence, the individual meets a panel that introduces itself before sitting to commence the interrogation.
“You are asked to give a brief introduction and your background before being taken through the main interview. The stage involves being asked to state what you own and how you acquired it. You are also asked to declare what your close family members own on your behalf,” .
So dreadful is the operation that some of those who have undergone the exercise are reportedly contemplating resigning altogether. There are reports that principal secretaries and parastatal chiefs who will also undergo the same test at a later stage have panicked after hearing about the experiences of their juniors.
NIS had secretly compiled a report on each of the top government officials, beginning with the procurement and finance officers, which forms the basis of the interrogations.
The spies are said to have done the work in the last one year, in a special assignment by their boss Philip Kameru.
The information collected by the team will be used as part of the investigation on the lifestyle audit directive by President Kenyatta on June 1, which made it compulsory for senior Government officials to be asked to explain their sources of wealth.
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