Unexplained wealth confiscation low-hanging fruit for graft war

Most people outside Pakistan have probably never heard of Malik Riaz Hussain, one of the richest people and the largest real estate developer in Asia. His company, Bahria Town Limited, owns gated communities, towns, shopping malls, cinemas, supermarket chains, sports stadiums, skyscrapers and all sorts of other structures.

In total, Mr Hussain personally houses more than a million people and employs more than 160,000 others in businesses occupying more than 60,000 acres of some of the most prime land in Asian cities.

Hussain got to his lofty perch through hard work, gumption, grit and the Almighty’s will — at least that is the official story. Having dropped out of high school due to his father’s bankruptcy, Hussain spent his youth as a painter in the Pakistani navy yards, where he rose from the lowly menial position to a military engineering contractor and onwards to billionaire status.

The details are sketchy but, somewhere between painting walls in the barracks, he happened to win a contract for the construction of two housing schemes for the military. In addition, the military somehow saw it fit to transfer its ownership in these developments, whose construction it had paid for, to the man. Talk about luck meeting business acumen!

After a long stretch of nothing but good luck, Hussain suddenly had to face some bad luck.

A year ago, on one cold December morning in London, British authorities froze his bank accounts holding more than £20 million. Other accounts were discovered and, by August this year, more than £190 million belonging to him had been frozen. In addition, a £60 million mansion that he owned in London was seized.

In the space of seven months, a total of nine court orders had been issued by British courts against Hussain. He could not access, transfer or deal with any of these assets as they were suspected to be the proceeds of crime and money laundering.

In August, Hussain entered into a settlement deal with the British authorities: He would forfeit £140 million in cash, as well as the mansion, and the frozen £190 million in the bank returned to Pakistan to pay for various outstanding court fines and awards against him.

A lot of money that had been appropriated from Pakistanis by an unrepentant ‘tenderpreneur’ was returned to its rightful owners in under eight months without an arrest, prosecution or conviction. Minimal resources in terms of time and personnel produced incredible results in a very short time.

The orders used by the British authorities are innovative weapons known as Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWOs), highly effective in denying criminal syndicates the resources to carry out their activities.

Money seized from crooks is money not being used to finance more opportunities for graft.

Let’s acknowledge that in Kenya, there is an arms race between criminals and law enforcement. And the criminals are ahead. We cannot continue using outdated strategies and there is a need to adapt, innovate and build agility into the tactics that we use to fight corruption and impunity.

Had Hussain been a Kenyan, he, probably, would have been arrested on a Friday afternoon in the presence of a battery of reporters, arraigned in court on a Monday, denied bail for two or three weeks and finally freed. His case would have died a natural death and none of us would have heard of him again. That is the uninspiring state of things in Kenya.

The EACC, the ODPP and the DCI must, as a matter of priority, thoroughly and seriously evaluate the effectiveness of arrest, arraignment and prosecution of financial criminals is an effective strategy in all cases and consider whether the resources they have could be applied in more effective ways.

Non-conviction-based seizure and forfeiture of questionable assets is a very innovative strategy that promises quick wins by doing maximum damage to criminals. Once again, disruption, rather than prosecution, should be the strategy in fighting corruption.