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{
    "id": 124069,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/124069/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 257,
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I want to urge all hon. Members that it is high time we passed this Bill. I remember when this Bill was introduced in 2006 in this House, the atmosphere and politics at that time was such that any form of rumors that circulated would defeat a Bill that was as important as this one. The rumor at that time was that this Bill was a USA project and that it was targeting a certain community, in fact, a certain religion in Kenya. So, it went down very badly with so many Members of Parliament. We did not look at the merits of the Bill. It did not see the light of day because of the existing politics at that time. We are now at a different time. Now that the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance has introduced this Bill, people are able to see the reasons behind it. Everyone who has been out there and knows a thing or two about money laundering will know that we need this Bill and so we should not be left behind. I would like to make two points very quickly. We need to support this Bill for various reasons that have been put forward. One of those reasons is that we need to understand that crime and criminology evolve. Crime takes its own form of life. Criminals are not sleeping wherever they are; they are inventing new methods of crime every day! As a State, we need to know that when crimes are committed, they are not committed against an individual. If a child suffers rape or defilement, the State prosecutes the perpetrator of that crime because it is all of us who have been wronged by the commission of that offence. The offences in criminal law are evolving and are becoming very sophisticated. It is, therefore, the State’s responsibility to evolve and come up with laws that are able to deal with these highly technological crimes. When we were debating the Kenya Communications (Amendment) Bill, we discussed crimes that are committed by use of computers. We passed that Bill. I want to repeat some of the arguments that we advanced then. Money laundering is a very complicated and intricate kind of crime. We need a new law that will address the infrastructure and the interconnectivities that exist from the source of money laundering down to the consumer. This Bill may not be perfect, but it is a first attempt and we need to support it. We have to start from somewhere. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, we need to know that even as we want to be part of the international community, as a general point, let us not cut and paste the laws that we want to pass in this country. I am very worried that sometimes when we go for international conventions, we come back with ideas which we pass here wholesale. Because this Bill has support from all sides, we need to look at it again. I am pleading with my fellow legislators that we look at this law very clearly so that we do not just cut and paste. The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance said that stakeholders have looked at it. However, I want to plead again, particularly when we come to the Third Reading, that we look at the clauses in this Bill so that our people are not hurt. I am saying so for one reason. We passed some law here in the last Parliament. It was like a whole convention had come to Kenya and it became impractical to implement that law. So, I am pleading that we need to look at this law again in the Third Reading. Let us look at the realities. During the Initial Public Offers (IPOs), Kenyans came out with a lot of money they had hidden under their pillows and elsewhere in their houses. These are honest people who have no faith in the banking system in Kenya. Somebody convinced them that if they invested in the IPOs, they would get some money and that, that was a better way of"
}