Raila accuses Jubilee of attempting to muzzle Auditor General

CORD leader Raila Odinga has accused Jubilee government of attempting to muzzle the Office of the Auditor General for apparently exposing financial flaws in the system.

Raila said that efforts to gag public institutions should stop calling on Africa to focus on building professional bureaucracies and autonomous and professional agencies to capable of auditing government accounts and prosecuting corruption.

In his speech at the 2nd Annual General Meeting and Conference of the African Organization of Public Accounts Committees (Afropac), Mr Odinga further stated that Africans must address serious problems that the continent is confronted with and put in pace measure to fight corruption.

“Africans must take the lead in chasing their stolen billions and returning them to the public. We are certainly capable of doing so if we can surmount sufficient political will,” he stated.

He heaped praise on former South African President, Thabo Mbeki, whom he termed as “one of the most eminent sons of Africa.

Raila said that Mbeki was bold in offering leadership for on the issue of illicit financial flows over the last several years, starting with his chairmanship of the High-Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows in 2011.

He stated that: “Illicit financial flows are the moneys that international corporations and their partners in Africa should have paid to governments in Africa as taxes, but evaded doing so through irregular accounting practices thereby leaving Africa poorer.”

“It is the money that corrupt public and private sector officials get legally or illegally, and take out to safe havens abroad. It is the money that masterminds of trade in drugs, poachers of our elephants, rhinos and other wildlife, and human trafficking make.”

He noted that the over $50 billion a year, that illegally flows out of Africa should be injected into the continent to pay for the education of poor children, to care for mothers in need of help and t train young Africans so they get good jobs.

“This money could have been used to create facilities here that would stop young Africans from embarking on those risky and miserable journeys across deep seas to seek better lives in Europe as refugees.”