Kenya: Why Good Faith is Essential in Bill On Money Laundering - AllAfrica.com

Emmanuel Wetang'ula

Money laundering is the procedure by which big amounts of illegally obtained money, lets state from drug trafficking or terrorist activity, is given the visual aspect of having originated from a legitimate source.

If done successfully, it allows the felons to keep control over their return and ultimately to supply a legitimate screen for their beginning of income.

It is not an offense in Republic Of Kenya and immense sums of money of money earned from criminal activities may simply be sanitised through our fiscal establishments without any action being taken by law enforcement agencies.

However, the above place may not last for long since it is pending before the grand House in the word form of the Return of Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Bill, 2008.

The argument before the House have been serious. Both sides of the watershed agree that the Bill is well intended, but its enforcement may conflict on the cardinal rights of Kenyans.

Despite its good intentions, attention must be taken to guarantee that it makes not take away rights recognised by the Fundamental Law in the name of fighting crime, the restrictions to such as rights as provided by the law is sufficient.

This law is penal in nature and some of the projected punishments are draconian. A menace of a seven-year jail term, a mulct of Sh2.5 million and forfeiture of place is not a smack on the wrist.

Hence, the proposition that regulations of grounds applicable in civil legal proceeding shall use to legal proceeding on application for arrogation or retrain order wings in the human face of the fact that such as a penal law necessitates a higher load of cogent evidence on the portion of the state.

Reading through some of the arguments made in the House, there is no uncertainty some of our mononuclear phagocyte system are ignorant of the fact that Republic Of Kenya acceded to the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, 1988. This is one of the international responses to fighting this vice, and Republic Of Kenya acceded to the pact on October 19, 1992.

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The procedure we are currently piquant in is to domesticate the pact so that it may be law in Kenya. As such, we are limited by the commissariat of international law as every pact in military unit is binding upon political parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith.

This philosophy is referred to as pacta sunt servanda. This good religion footing of pacts connotes that a political party to the pact cannot raise commissariat of its domestic law as justification for a failure to perform. Further treatments on the projected law are necessary.

Wetang'ula is an advocator of the High Court.