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Mudavadi recalls stormy World Bank meeting as Finance minister

ANC leader Musalia Mudavadi
ANC leader Musalia Mudavadi has revealed how a meeting he held with a top World Bank official almost turned chaotic because of Kenya's reputation for graft. 
Mudavadi says World Bank Deputy President Edward Jaycox reprimanded the Kenyan delegation during the 1993 meeting in Washington DC, United States. 
“He had no room for niceties and formalities. He went straight to the point giving us a thorough dressing down,” Mudavadi, then-Finance minister, discloses.
The ANC boss was accompanied to the meeting by then CBK governor Eric Kotut, Economic Secretary Terry Ryan and his Finance PS Wilfred Koinange. 
The meetings were to convince the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to relax its stringent conditions on Kenya and resume aid.
However, Jaycox was infuriated, emphasising that he would not discuss anything with looters, Mudavadi says in his book Soaring above the Storms of Passions.
“I don’t want to talk to people who have ruined their own economy now coming here thinking that we can give them more money to go and loot,” Jaycox said.
Nonetheless, it was all smiles later as Jaycox held a private meeting with Mudavadi during which he appraised him of rampant corruption at CBK.
The meeting agreed on a radical shake-up of CBK before the provision of aid could resume.
For Mudavadi, the experience was part of a turbulent start to his stint as the Minister for Finance.
His trip to Washington D.C. was informed by the difficulty in making headway in negotiations with then IMF head of mission, Peter Heller.
Mudavadi concedes that though Heller was the most difficult person he has ever encountered, the latter had good reasons for his toughness.
“But this was not without good cause. For, I began understanding the agreement that we had made with IMF under the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP),” Mudavadi says.
Returning from Washington D.C., Mudavadi would later come face-to-face with the ravages of the Goldenberg Scandal.
“We eventually had the audit done by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which was then headed by Charles Muchene. The results were devastating – damning,” Mudavadi says.
The Goldenberg scandal was a scheme to rip off billions of shillings from the government in exchange for non-existent gold and diamond exports.
Two companies — Goldenberg International Limited and Exchange Bank Limited — were the architects. 
Of those accused of complicity in this economic crime, only Kamlesh Pattni is alive.
Others charged for involvement in the scandal include former intelligence chief James Kanyotu, Wilfred Koinange and former CBK governor Eliphaz Riungu.
Mudavadi has been a vocal critic of what he terms as ‘reckless borrowing’ by the Jubilee regime.
In May, the ANC party leader called for the establishment of an Independent Public Debt Management Authority to curtail haphazard borrowing by the government.
Speaking a day before Mashujaa Day celebrations, Mudavadi bemoaned the lack of public participation in borrowing.
Mudavadi also criticised parliament’s decision in October to increase Kenya’s debt ceiling to Sh9 trillion.
He described the decision as out of touch with Kenyans’ tribulations and the spiralling debt levels.
(edited by O. Owino)

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