The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK)  governor Patrick Njoroge has given an insight into former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s last term in office and how government officials attempted a Goldenberg-esque scandal before the plan was nipped in the bud.

Dr Njoroge alleged that senior government officials had infiltrated the national treasury and they attempted to embezzle public funds in the foreign exchange department. The CBK governor did not mention names as he said he did not have substantive evidence on the same.

“In the last two to three years, we have people who were again trying to bring us back to Goldenberg. if you remember what was happening in Goldenberg, this is what some of the people are pushing towards. I don’t want to get into details because they will ask me where is the proof, and I will say I don’t have proof, am not DCI,” The CBK boss said this at an induction function for members of parliament.

The Goldenberg scandal which depleted 10% of the country’s GDP, was an export compensation scandal that took place in the 1990s whereby gold trading companies were compensated for their exports.  Although it notionally appears that the scheme was intended to earn the nation hard currency, little or no gold was exported but the compensation was done. The scandal appears to have involved government officials at the highest levels of the government of the late former president Daniel Moi.

The CBK governor also brought to the fore that the economic turmoil witnessed in the country over the last two years could not entirely be blamed on the COVID pandemic as the public had been made to believe. Dr Njoroge said that there are some business people who took advantage to enrich themselves, he explained that these rogue traders worked in cahoots with industry players especially banks to engineer an economic crisis.

However Dr Njoroge intimated that it was now water below the bridge and that he was glad we had come out of the electoral period and we are now forging on well and in the right direction