Listen to This Article Enhance your reading experience by listening to this article.

Politicians and their allies have made hefty withdrawals of Sh200 and Sh100 notes from banks and hoarded them for use in bribing potential voters, leading to shortage.

Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i yesterday said many politicians are seeking to influence voters’ decision ahead of the August 9 General Election.

Matiang’i said the leaders were openly bribing voters. “Many people are not working. They are standing by the roadside to get Sh200 from these money launderers,” he said.

Money laundering

The CS, who was speaking during the launch of the ‘Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing National Risk Assessment Report (2021)’, said there were many scattered pieces of legislation that need to be tidied up.

However, he lamented, some of the politicians who will be elected might frustrate this war on money laundering.

“After this poll, 40 per cent of the people who will sit in elective institutions could be active players in money laundering and trafficking. Do you hope that these people will tidy up the legislative environment?” he asked.

According to Matiang’i, during the transition from the old currency to the new one, the Government witnessed a phenomenon where car dealers were suddenly exchanging old notes for the new ones.

The report launched yesterday revealed that the money laundering threat in second-hand car dealerships was rated ‘medium high’ due to weak regulatory controls and monitoring.

Predicate offences

“There are large volumes of cash involved in this industry, especially the second-hand dealers, some of which could be proceeds of other predicate offences like drug trafficking.  

There are also cases of high-end vehicles stolen from foreign jurisdictions that find their way into the country,” the report reads. 

Matiang’i revealed that dealers were now financing the Sh200 dished out by politicians to voters.

 “Car dealers changed billions of shillings. How many cars do you need to sell to be able to have billions? All these dealers are friends of senior politicians,” he said.

 He urged the public to elect leaders who will be at the forefront of the fight against terrorism and money laundering.

 “Either we elect a government that will not fight money laundering — because that is its way of life and we will not achieve anything — or we elect a government that is against money laundering and will join us in fighting these vices,” he said.