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{
    "id": 681720,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/681720/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 494,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Eng.) Gumbo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 24,
        "legal_name": "Nicholas Gumbo",
        "slug": "nicholas-gumbo"
    },
    "content": "of “financial institution” and “reporting institution”, is both a financial and reporting institution. If the Financial Reporting Centre is to tackle money laundering, then it needs to delink itself, to some extent, operationally and in terms of its organisation from the CBK. It cannot be a department within the CBK. It may look like a contradiction to try to suggest that the CBK may, either unknowingly or even knowingly be looped into the money laundering ring. We saw what happened in the Goldenberg scandal. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, I sit with you in PAC and one of the concerns we have, for example, with the NYS Scandal is the fact that if the controls in the CBK, especially being the originating bank where most of the payments came from, were stringent, the scandal would perhaps not have escalated to the level that it did. Therefore, we need to delink this Centre and give it operational independence because, unknown to many, money laundering is the major cause of inequality in our society. In fact, anything that breeds social inequity breeds tension within society. Seven years ago, I was invited in Tanzania. I was in the Republic of Tanzania as a member of the CDF Committee to share experiences with our brothers and sisters on the other side. On the sidelines, I was invited to give a talk at an engineering conference which was going on at that time. When I am outside the country, I treat my country with utmost respect. I keep any criticism I need to make of my country; I keep it until I come back to my country. On that particular day, there was a report which showed that the total number of dollar millionaires in Kenya was twice the number of all the dollar millionaires in the rest of East Africa – Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. On paper, it looks like it is a good thing until you unpackage it and look at what lies below. So, I made my presentation and termed it as one of the advances that Kenya had made having very many dollar millionaires in our midst. You cannot challenge somebody in their own household. When the master of ceremony, who was a Tanzanian, stood to speak, he said:- “Yes, Eng. Gumbo, it may be true that Kenya has twice the number of dollar millionaires in East Africa. Indeed, Kenya has many wealthy people but I want to assure you that as we speak today, much as the wealthiest person in East Africa may be residing in Kenya, I could bet my last cent that the poorest person in East Africa also lives in Kenya.” Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, that is not good statistics. Our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the largest in the East African region. We have the highest GDP per capita in the whole region. If we have the highest GDP and GDP per capita in East Africa, why do almost 42 per cent of our people live below the poverty line? It has to do with the fact that a lot of the wealth in this country is in the hands of a few people. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the wealth of the nation being in the hands of a few people if it was earned in a proper way. Most of the money in the hands of these few people has not been acquired in the right way."
}