The Kroll Report: 'The looting of Kenya'

After Mwai Kibaki won Kenya's December 2002 election on an anti-corruption platform, his government engaged the international risk consultancy Kroll to trace money allegedly taken out of the country during Daniel arap Moi's 24-year rule. The government received Kroll's report in April 2004, but it was never acted upon or published.

The leaked report — described by The Guardian as running to 110 pages — alleges that relatives and associates of Moi moved more than £1bn of public money through shell companies, trusts and nominees, and identifies properties, companies and bank accounts in 28 countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, South Africa and Australia. It concentrates on Moi's sons and two close associates.

Publication came months before Kenya's December 2007 presidential election, shortly after Moi had endorsed Kibaki's re-election campaign. The Kenyan government said the report was incomplete and 'based a lot on hearsay', while the UK Foreign Office publicly rejected the government's claim that Britain had refused to help recover assets.

I published the report through WikiLeaks with our own analysis on 30 August 2007, and The Guardian reported it on its front page the following day. We said the leak came from within high levels of the Kenyan government; The Guardian reported that it was believed to have been leaked by a senior official unhappy with the government's failure to tackle corruption and its alliance with Moi.

Kroll said it could not confirm or deny that the document was what it purported to be. The Kenyan government confirmed that it had received a Kroll report in April 2004 but disputed its reliability.