Goldenburg: Story of a whistleblower

The Goldenburg scandal first surfaced in 1993, when Opposition MPs Anyang’ Nyong’o and Paul Muite revealed in Parliament what was going on in the Central Bank of Kenya.

At the time, all that existed of the scandal were torrid debates in Parliament and a series of dry and technical pieces about the scandal written by Nation Business Editor Peter Warutere, a whole year earlier.

Mostly documentary evidence and business journalese, the pieces had gone largely unnoticed and hardly spelled out the implications of the largest financial pata potea in Africa at the time (pata potea is a rigged street card game popular in Nairobi’s downtown back alleys).

Then, former corruption czar John Githongo, at the time a freelance journalist, responding to a report in The Independent of London, wrote a prescient passage in his “Political Diary” column in the July 1993 issue of the Nairobi-based Executive magazine: “To me, the Goldenberg saga marks a turning point in the development of corruption in Kenya. For the first time in this nation’s history, a single set of deals is having macroeconomic implications… it is shaking the very foundations of Kenya’s economy… The country has started to consume itself, like the Chinese serpent that is depicted as eating its own tail…”

But it was a single article by a Nation journalist, Sarah Elderkin, a little later, that started the hue and cry.

After the article appeared, the IMF and World Bank cried foul and (president Daniel arap) Moi called for investigations to pacify Bretton Woods.

Then the weekly Economic Review got its teeth into the story and refused to let go till Kamlesh Pattni was arrested, for the first time, in March 1994. The Goldenberg circus had begun.

In retrospect, Goldenberg seems to have started the decline of the gilded age of the Moi years.

It seems that after the Kanu victory and resurgence in 1992, there was no force capable of challenging Moi and the ruling party.

Then Goldenberg began triggering exposure of scandal after scandal and the hounds started nipping at the old man’s heels.

Even if it would take another 10 years (far short of the 100 years the old man had prophesied Kanu would rule) for Moi to finally leave State House and the real story of Goldenberg to emerge.

Twelve years ago, before David Munyakei’s life turned on itself, he had come to Nairobi as a young man with a sense of entitlement and great plans for the future.

His high school record was exemplary and he was someone who had held positions of responsibility in both his O level and A level schools.

Before Munyakei was offered employment at the CBK he had also been accepted as a cadet in the Army.

He was planning on accepting when the CBK offer came through and he opted instead to become a banker.