The law provides criminal penalties for official corruption. Despite public progress in fighting corruption during the year, the government did not implement relevant laws effectively. Officials frequently engaged in allegedly corrupt practices with impunity.

Corruption: During the year the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) initiated investigations and prosecutions of high-level cases involving six county governors and dozens of national government and parastatal officials with ties to the ruling party and to the political opposition. A landmark ruling in 2019 bars county governors from accessing their offices until their corruption cases are concluded. One governor was indicted and impeached by the county assembly while his case continued in the courts. The EACC was also investigating high-level procurement irregularities at the Kenya Medical Supplies Agency, a state agency with the sole mandate of procuring medications and equipment for government health centers. The investigations involved procurement of personal protective equipment at inflated costs and probed the alleged disappearance of personal protective equipment and other equipment donated to the country. These investigations and prosecutions continued at year’s end.

The public continued to perceive corruption as a severe problem at all levels of government. A 2019 survey by Transparency International found 45 percent of respondents had paid a bribe, compared with 37 percent in the previous 2015 survey. Police and authorities issuing identification documents were cited the most for taking bribes. Corruption had increased according to 67 percent of respondents, and 71 percent believed the government was doing a poor job of combating corruption, unchanged from the results of Transparency’s 2015 poll.

In January 2019 President Kenyatta appointed a new chief executive officer of the EACC, who introduced a new approach to tackling corruption that prioritized high-impact cases, systems reviews, assets recovery, and public communication. In the commissioner’s first year in office, the EACC secured 44 convictions, one of the highest tallies in its 17 years of existence, and recovered assets of more than three billion shillings ($30 million), exceeding what had been recovered over the previous five years combined. At the end of 2019, the EACC reported 407 criminal corruption cases and 778 civil cases pending in court. Officials from agencies tasked with fighting corruption, including the EACC, the ODPP, and judiciary, were also subjects of corruption allegations.

The EACC has the legal mandate to investigate official corruption allegations, develop and enforce a code of ethics for public officials, and engage in public outreach on corruption. The EACC, however, lacks prosecutorial authority and must refer cases to the ODPP to initiate prosecutions. During the year the ODPP established a multiagency team tasked with collaboration on investigations and prosecution of high-profile organized crimes like corruption. Operational conflict, however, between the ODPP and Directorate of Criminal Investigations with regards to which office can initiate investigations and deliver files to court resulted in the delayed prosecution of the Kenya Ports Authority managing director on corruption allegations.

The government took additional steps during the year to combat corruption, including increasing the number of investigations and prosecutions. The government made limited progress on other commitments, including adoption of international anticorruption standards and digitization of government records and processes. Because courts had significant case backlogs, cases could take years to resolve.

Police corruption remained a significant problem. Human rights NGOs reported police often stopped and arrested citizens to extort bribes. Police sometimes jailed citizens on trumped-up charges or beat those who could not pay the bribes. During police vetting conducted by the National Police Service Commission (NPSC) in recent years, many police officers were found to have the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars in their bank accounts, far exceeding what would be possible to save from their salaries. Mobile money records showed some officers also transferred money to superior officers.

The judiciary and the National Police Service continued measures to reform the handling of traffic cases by police and courts, streamlining the management of traffic offenses to curb corruption. Despite this progress, no senior police official was convicted or jailed for corruption-related offenses during the year.

Financial Disclosure: The law requires all public officers to declare their income, assets, and liabilities to their “responsible commission” (for example, the Parliamentary Service Commission in the case of members of parliament) every two years. Public officers must also include the income, assets, and liabilities of their spouses and dependent children younger than 18. Failure to submit the declaration as required by law or providing false or misleading information is punishable by a substantial fine or imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year or both. Information contained in these declarations was not readily available to the public, and the relevant commission must approve requests to obtain and publish this information. Any person who publishes or otherwise makes public information contained in public officer declarations without such permission may be subject to imprisonment for up to five years, a fine, or both. Authorities also required police officers undergoing vetting to file financial disclosure reports for themselves and their immediate family members. These reports were publicly available.

The law requires public officers to register potential conflicts of interest with the relevant commissions. The law identifies the interests public officials must register, including directorships in public or private companies, remunerated employment, securities holdings, and contracts for supply of goods or services, among others. The law requires candidates seeking appointment to nonelected public offices to declare their wealth, political affiliations, and relationships with other senior public officers. This requirement is in addition to background screening on education, tax compliance, leadership, and integrity. Many officials met these requirements and reported potential conflicts of interest. Authorities did not strictly enforce ethics rules relating to the receipt of gifts and hospitality by public officials.

There were no reported challenges to any declarations of wealth–which normally are not made public–filed by public officials. The requirement for asset and conflict of interest declarations was suspended by a 2018 Public Service Commission memo. The memo was issued after the commission’s engagement with government stakeholders indicated a need for clarity on completing the assets registry. The Public Service Commission’s suspension of the requirement led to inconsistency in the application of the directive, with some institutions requiring declarations while others did not.