References: Section 6 of the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act of 2003 establishes the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, which has the exclusive mandate of investigating allegations of corruption.

References: Section 10 of the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act (2003) provides that the The Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) and its director shall be independent of any external direction or control, while Section 18 provides for the independence of the commission's advisory board. The director of the commission has security of tenure meaning he or she cannot be threatened into particular actions against the threat of dismissal.

References: It is not entirely the case that the anti-corruption agency is protected from political interference. Despite the numerous corrupt incidents established by the Controller and Auditor General (CAG), for example, Kenya has only seen a single big case brought to conclusion (of the embezzlement by the chair and manager of the national AIDS fund). Part of the problem seems to be that corruption in the last decade or so has been perpetrated by key people across the political divide, meaning that prosecutions would touch key people in the current and past governments. Furthermore, a former governance and ethics permanent secretary, who recently returned from self-exile in the United Kingdom, apparently recorded the The Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) director pleading with him not to make further revelations on high corruption as the secretary would be victimizing his own Kikuyu people. Read Michaela Wrong (2009), Its Our Turn to Eat.

Further, early 2007 saw the Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister threaten measures to clip the KACC director's wings, including reducing his salary and resources when it seemed KACC was determined to bring key people in the current government to task over the Anglo Leasing scandal. The KACC director seems to have consequently relented. Thus despite direction by the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee that KACC investigate the suspicious sale of government shares in two key state corporations, KACC has refused to do so.

References: Part 5 of the First Schedule of the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act (2003) establishes that the the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) director can only be removed on the recommendation of a tribunal constituted to investigate his or her conduct. The three-member tribunal will have persons qualified to be judges of the High Court of the Court of Appeal. However, to the extent that the Kenyan Judiciary is highly compromised vis-a-vis the executive who appoints the Chief Justice and Judicial Service Commission, it is conceivably that a desirable bench could be established to remove the KACC director.

Ironically, the immediate past head of KACC was in October shunted out of office in what amounted to a comedy of errors. On the eve of the expiry of his five year tenure, the president violated the law in unilaterally reappointing him when he had just previously followed the law in having the KACC Advisory Board and Parliament nominate a candidate for reappointment as Assistant Director. Consequently, Parliament voted to extinguish the Gazette Notice carrying the reappointment, the outgoing director thereby being thrown out. See [ LINK ].

References: Section 8 of the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act (2003) provides that the candidates for director and assistant directors be recommended by the advisory board and approved by Parliament, after which the president appoints. Subsection 6 empowers the commission to employ other full-time and part-time staff as may be necessary to perform its functions.

References: The Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) has a full professional staff cohort, among the best-paid public officers in Kenya. Its director has been receiving a higher salary than the national president. However, perceptions that the agency was not pulling its weight have led the KACC advisory board to impose a 30 percent pay cut on the next substantive director of the agency for whom the recruitment process is currently underway.

References: Section 13 of the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act (2003) provides that the expenditures of the commission be charged to the Consolidated Fund, meaning it is free of ministerial controls that many other agencies are subjected to. The KACC advisory board may approve grants, gifts, donations and bequests that might be offered to the commission. Consequently, the commission has reliable income sources.

References: Sections 15 and 36 of the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act (2003) require the commission to produce annual and quarterly reports of its activities respectively. See [ LINK ].

References: Section 7 of the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act (2003) empowers the commission to investigate any matter that raises suspicion that corruption or an economic crime might have been committed. While these powers have been enough to enable the commission to investigate many instances without hindrance, a former cabinet minister challenged the constitutionality of its powers, leading to a more than one-year delay in the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission's (KACC) work. Further, the former director obviously succumbed to political intrigues, undermining the commission's work.

A major problem for KACC is that it does not have prosecuting powers, meaning it must hand over its investigative findings to the Attorney General who decides whether or not to prosecute.

References: Section 7 of the Anti Corruption and Economic Crimes Act directs the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) to investigate any matter raising suspicion that corruption or an economic crime might have been committed. However, public perception is that KACC has not been objective and aggressive in fulfilling its mandate, which is why perpetrators of grand corruption never get before the courts. Indeed, the KACC director is alleged to have advised a whistle-blower to back off allegations of grand corruption because the people being accused had allegedly suffered enough. See M. Wrong (209), Its Our Turn to Eat.

References: The Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) has just one office countrywide, which limits its accessibility to citizens. Besides an annual report, the law requires KACC to submit quarterly reports, which has been done diligently. This suggests that complaints are acted upon promptly even if they may take much longer to finalize. From January to June 2007, 3,749 corruption reports were received, of which only 819 were adjudged worthy of investigation. For progress reports since its inception, go to [ LINK ].

References: Section 65 of the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act (2003) offers protection from prosecution for informers and also requires that court proceedings ensure that informers are not compromised. The Witness Protection Act, designed to take care of whistle-blowers, provides that the attorney general can: (a) make arrangements necessary to allow the witness to establish a new identity or otherwise to protect the witness; (b) relocate the witness; (c) provide accommodation for the witness; (d) provide transport for the property of the witness; (e) provide reasonable financial assistance to the witness; (f) provide to the witness services in the nature of counseling and vocational training; (g) do anything else the attorney general considers necessary to ensure the witness's safety and welfare.

Since the act came into force, it is not clear the extent to which it has been applied to protect vulnerable whistle-blowers. Neither is it clear if anyone has been victimized for whistle-blowing. However, 2009 has seen the killing of various people involved in activities under police investigation, some of whom have been thought to have been killed either by their former co-conspirators or by the police, who are thought might have wanted to silence them. See for example, [ LINK ].