When John Githongo, Kenya’s anti-corruption tsar, suddenly went to ground during an official visit to Europe last year, the Kenyan and international media launched a frantic man-hunt to establish why “the big man’’ had abandoned his post. That interest did not die away when he resurfaced at an Oxford college. It didn’t take a genius to guess that when the official responsible for policing the government’s finances flees, something is seriously amiss. Given that the international community each year supplies Kenya with nearly $500 million in aid, you might expect the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and western governments to share that curiosity. As one of Kenya’s three biggest donors, Britain would surely be concerned.

Not so. Githongo has never been debriefed by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), whose boss Hilary Benn recently announced 55 million pounds in new funding for Kenya. Benn’s gesture of approval was echoed by the World Bank, which last week shocked many by unveiling $120 million in loans.

The astonishment springs from the fact that in the very week the loan was unveiled, the Kenyan press began publishing Githongo’s explanation of why he resigned. His dossier accuses a clutch of key ministers of setting up bogus contracts designed to steal hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds. The scandal stretches to the top, for President Mwai Kibaki took no action. If true, Kenya’s government has not so much broken with the sleazy practices of Daniel Arap Moi’s administration as raised them to new levels of sophistication.

Given the seriousness of the claims, the new loans have triggered apoplexy in many quarters. Sir Edward Clay, Britain’s former high commissioner to Nairobi, has written to Paul Wolfowitz, the new World Bank head, to protest at its “blind and offensive blundering’’ that makes a mockery of “the brave men and women taking risks to ensure that the scourge of corruption is banished’’. Analysts wonder what to make, now, of Wolfowitz’s declarations that fighting graft is a priority. His actions, including the suspension of a $124 million loan to Chad for reneging on a deal aimed at ensuring oil revenues reached the poor, had suggested an era of tough engagement lay ahead. The Kenya loan smacks of a return to the bank’s traditional way of doing business in Africa, which kept the likes of Zaire’s Mobutu flush with funds.

Why are western donors conspiring in top-level fraud? DFID officials argue that aid cut-offs “only hurt the poorest of the poor’’ and insist that on-the-ground policing ensures DFID money itself is never filched. But this is naive. An administration bent on plunder simply focuses its energies on parts of the budget not policed by foreign donors. The “poorest of the poor’’ may end up with first-rate schools at the end of roads too potholed to be passable: development cannot be delivered in self-contained parcels. The notion that aid can sidestep shoddy government to reach the base is threadbare. — The Guardian