We'll demand recompense for graft proceeds

 

There is this book – Blood Oil – on Saudi Arabia’s leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), by two Wall Street Journal journalists that I think should guide the next government on certain issues, especially those touching on how to deal with the ostentation and opulence of the current State House mafia.

MBS is a man of action. When he took over the leadership of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, the first order of business was to stem the grand corruption plaguing the country. And he needed to start from the top. Instead of focusing on the omenas, he started with the big fish.

Calls were made to dozens of some of the richest people in the country (among them 11 princes related to the young Crown Prince) to attend a very important meeting at the Royal Palace. Others were called for an urgent meeting at the Ritz-Carlton, a hotel that usually housed foreign heads of state and other dignitaries under normal circumstances but was now closed for this special ‘meeting’.

The Ritz turned out to be a temporary Alcatraz for the oil oligarchs who had been invited there. They were thoroughly interrogated (there were also hints of some Nyati house tactics, though the government denied this) as to the source of their wealth. Naturally, not many could explain how they had become dollar billionaires.

By the time their luxurious stay in confinement was coming to an end, they had paid back billions of dollars back to the government, ill-gotten money. One of the culprits was MBS’s cousin, who had a penchant for living large – he had several private jets and, whenever he took a fancy to anything, he would buy a dozen of them for his various homes scattered around the world. Whether it’s a Bentley or a Maserati, he would buy them by the dozen.

Of course, MBS’s government has been accused of doing all manner of bad things. They lured a journalist – Jamal Khashoggi – who was critical of Saudi Arabia into their Istanbul consulate and murdered him most brutally. I am looking at a similar scenario here. Not the butchering of critics but recompense for ill-gotten monies. The forced confinement is what I think a new government, rooted in constitutionality and restitution, would need to implement immediately.

I visualise hordes of our plunderers being taken in for confinement (for us we will settle for a seedy motel on the outskirts of the city) where they will be interrogated on the source of their wealth. I volunteer a few questions: for a man who could barely afford a digital Casio Watch, how can you now afford a Patek Phillipe? You couldn’t afford a belt and now you are donning crocodile leather designer belts and shoes? A person who was a tout is now being chauffeured around in S-Class Mercedes-Benz luxury vehicles?

Most of these fellows have never been known to have done a day’s work in their life. They should be made to pay back multiples of the money they have stolen, meaning they will be reduced to penury by the time we are through with them. We should thereafter parade them in public for shaming, and some whipping and gentle stoning which I believe will do their souls some good.

Some of the punishment might seem a tad harsh, but the crimes they have committed against fellow countrymen deserve an even harsher penalty. Nevertheless, if the government of the day decides that it shouldn’t be too draconian, even that will do for me too.

That is why, when I see a man like presidential aspirant Edwin Sifuna saying he will form a government anchored on the Constitution, it gives me hope because everything else is rooted in this document. If someone is corrupt, the punishment is laid out in our laws.

Do we ask for recompense to the public for what they stole? The answer lies somewhere in the Constitution. Do they need to go to jail? Again, the Constitution lays out the modus operandi for such punishment. In other words, the Constitution is the foundation that everything else should be built on. All we need is enforcement.

The writer is a communications consultant