Kenyans are seeking help from US President Barack Obama to recover billions of shillings of Eurobond proceeds said to have been stolen.
The Kenyans, on Sunday, January 24 posted a petition on the White House website asking Obama to have money that was deposited in one of the American banks traced.
“We petition the Obama administration to have US Attorney General Loretta Lynch help Kenya recover their looted Eurobond proceeds… a US bank is involved in this scandal,”reads the petition.
The implicated bank is JP Morgan, the biggest US bank by assets, where the Eurobond proceeds are said to have been deposited in June 2014.
The government allegedly withdrew some money but left KSh 88 billion at the JP Morgan and later sent it to the Central Bank of Kenya account at the US Federal Reserve Bank. The petitioners claim that the KSh 88 billion never reached government accounts and want to know where it is.
Their petition has already passed the first threshold of reaching 150 signatures within 30 days in order to be searchable within the website as it has above 800 signatures.
In order to get a responce from the president, the petition must cross the second threshold of at least 100,000 signatures within 30 days.
“If a petition meets the signature goal within the designated period, the White House will aim to respond to that petition within 60 days wherever possible,” White House explains.
During his visit in July 2014, Obama pledged to help Kenya fight corruption as it was weighing down the nation’s otherwise bright future.
CORD leader Raila Odinga has been piling pressure on President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration to explain to Kenyans how KSh 100 billion of the Eurobond proceeds was spent. According to the opposition leader, the government cannot account for the money.
The Jubilee administration borrowed KSh 250 billion from the international money markets between June and November 2014 to finance infrastructure development and repay a syndicated loan but critics say effects of the Eurobond proceeds cannot be felt in the economy.
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