Lawyers who hide suspicious cash deals obstruct graft war

I find it baffling that in Kenya people rush to the law only when caught on the wrong side of it.

If we were that respectful of the law, we won’t be in the mess we are in.

It’s no mean feat to be voted one of the most corrupt countries time and again. It means we are rotten to the core.

Since the onset of the renewed war on corruption, we have heard varied versions of the principle of innocent till proven guilty.

Ironically, that has been used by the senior state and public officials who get caught deeply mired in corruption.

Rarely has it come to the rescue of the poor, who get fatally shot over petty theft or just for being ‘suspects’.

No wonder, we have elected and state officials still in office despite being murder suspects or facing accusations of stealing public funds!

But there is, finally, a glimmer of hope following the ruling by Justice Mumbi Ngugi on the contentious issue of getting the leaders implicated in corruption to step aside despite protests from lawyers.

Advocates challenging the changes to the Finance Bill, 2019 requiring them to report suspicious transactions do not appear to have valid reasons.

Suggesting that they risk being turned into security agents is the lamest excuse. Some of them have suggested that the move to bolster the financial bill will get many law firms out of business.

What I hear such lawyers saying is that to them, financial interests, regardless of the source, is more important than the overall interest of the country.

Kenya is not the only country that has gone down the path of enlisting the support of other professionals such as doctors, international community and even citizens to help in fighting crime.

At the very least, lawyers are, by definition, citizens first and lawyers second. They have both a moral and legal duty to do the right thing.

The suggestion that sharing dubious financial information with security agencies will impact on privacy of their clients is a cop out and has no legal legs to stand on when the funds they are protecting have a whiff of fraud written all over them.

If anything, in the eyes of the law, it makes them complicit to fraud if they decide to keep suspicious transactions of their clients to themselves instead of sharing it with the police.

Lawyers must also remember that their clients lost their right to privacy once they crossed the line into criminal activities.

They should have the wherewithal, both through their training and common sense, to determine what is legal or not.

It is basic law that any activity performed outside the law would be deemed unlawful.

It does not take only a police or judicial officer to make that determination, although they have the legal mandate to do so.

Everybody, including professionals such as lawyers and doctors, has the ability to determine criminal acts and hence, it is incumbent upon all of us to be the eyes and ears of the police in order to help them fight corruption and other crimes.

To use the mess in the Ministry of Lands as an example, there has been a countless number of suspicious land transactions that required a lawyer to facilitate.

And there you have a perfect case of how a lawyer can come across a criminal act and share in the fraudulently obtained finances and still not bat an eyelid because of confidentiality clause? I beg to differ!

With the lawyers’ input, many people, both local and foreign, have lost their land through dubious deals.

And lawyers are behind such schemes. Terrorism financing and illegal drug deals are some of the other crimes that need lawyers’ involvement.

Therefore, they have no justification to be silent on illegal transactions, given their detrimental impact on society.

I fail to see why Kenyan lawyers should not join forces with the rest of us to fight corruption — unless they have something to hide.

Kenyan banks have come on board to streamline their operations to counter money laundering.

Foreign countries have lent their support to keep track of suspicious funds laundered to their countries.

The changes to the Finance Bill, 2019 are meant to make legal work accountable and transparent like the rest of the professions.

Law is never cast on stone. It must be fluid and malleable to important changes to meet social challenges and demands.

Corruption is one such challenge Kenya faces. The law and, indeed, lawyers must adapt to meet societal challenges and needs.

The lawyers’ objection to the changes is likely to stymie anti-corruption efforts for their own financial interests.

Maintaining the status quo for lawyers in this regard will blur the line between justice and crime.

To paraphrase Shakespeare in "King Lear", which is the justice, and which is the thief, when we let lawyers turn a blind eye to criminal activities?

Lawyers must do the right thing and report dubious deals to the authorities pronto.