Refugees in Kenya Tell of Shakedown by U.N. Agency
By IAN FISHER
NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb. 14 - Dahir is too afraid to give his full name, and for good reason: he is a refugee. So far, at least three people with far more standing - Western workers at the United Nations here - have received death threats. For their safety, they were flown out of Kenya. No one will do that for Dahir.
But they all reportedly know about the same thing: unfolding allegations that refugees like Dahir, most of them poor and fleeing war, were turned into a business by the very people who were supposed to protect them.
United Nations investigators are quietly sifting through evidence that corrupt workers with the United Nations high commissioner for refugees in Kenya - a country where corruption is the norm - extorted fees for the agency's essential services, which are supposed to be free. The fees are rumored to range from a few dollars for an appointment or to fill out a form, to up to $5,000 for a new life in the United States, Canada or Australia.
Dahir, 27, an Ethiopian who fled his country in 1993, said he paid $3,400, sent mostly by friends abroad, to two United Nations workers at a hotel in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, last July. He said he paid out of frustration that his application to move to the West had stalled for four years, while friends waiting far less time had left as asylum seekers to the United States.
"They said, `We paid, we got the flight,' " said Dahir, who says he left Ethiopia in the 1990's because he was tortured. "They said, `Don't wait. There is no right of refugees in this place. Your right is your money. Just use your pocket.' "
Last year, 9,383 refugees from countries like Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia were approved to move to outside countries through the United Nations refugee agency's branch office in Nairobi, where the allegations are centered.
Most eligible refugees have been persecuted or cannot return home for other reasons. Ten countries accept such asylum seekers from East Africa, but the allegations of corruption focus on refugees going to the United States, which accepts most of the asylum seekers, Canada and Australia.
Daniel Tshitungi, head of the Kenya office, said it was impossible to know how widespread the corruption was - how many refugees paid to be resettled, over what period, and whether any unqualified people simply paid to get asylum - before an investigation by senior United Nations officials was completed.
Mr. Tshitungi acknowledged, however, that the investigation centered on at least four employees, responsible for processing and vetting the applications of thousands of refugees, and that the corruption appeared to date at least to December 1999.
"It's being handled in a very efficient way, but we don't want to make noise about it," Mr. Tshitungi said.
Several people with knowledge of the investigation say the allegations of corruption extend beyond the United Nations office to at least one private agency, and even to workers inside foreign embassies who handle asylum requests.
Peter Claussen, a spokesman for the American Embassy in Nairobi, acknowledged that an American investigator with the Immigration and Naturalization Service had been to Kenya recently to decide whether to initiate a separate probe. He said, however, that no American Embassy workers were suspects.
Officials with the many organizations that assist refugees in Kenya - where each day's newspapers carry articles about one corruption scandal or another - are unusually afraid to speak out publicly about the allegations. Much of that fear stems from death threats to at least three United Nations employees, one American and two Europeans, who reportedly found out about the scheme. The threats were considered so serious that all three were evacuated from Kenya late last year.
Three of the suspects are Kenyan, Mr. Tshitungi said. They still have their jobs - which people familiar with the investigation said put them in the powerful position of deciding which applications to forward to higher-ups - though with what Mr. Tshitungi called severely curtailed responsibilities.
The remaining suspect, an Italian who worked at the Nairobi office for about two years, did not have his contract renewed as a result of the allegations, Mr. Tshitungi said.
Refugees, as well as people who work with them here in Nairobi, said everything had a price in the Kenya branch of the refugee agency: Guards at the door had to be tipped, they said. One current employee recalled asking about 35 refugees in the Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya, where roughly 100,000 refugees live, how many had paid bribes to guards on the way into the refugee agency's offices there. Nearly everyone stood up, the employee said.
"I said, `Why do you pay?' They said, `Ah, well, life is sometimes hard.'" The most expensive service was the one refugees wanted most: resettlement in the West.
According to refugees, the corrupt workers were able to deliver what they sold - suggesting to some United Nations officials that corruption is not limited to a handful of relatively junior employees.
Business relied on an elaborate system of people known as "brokers," who would scout out refugees, negotiate prices and help the chosen through bureaucratic obstacles.
One Somali refugee, Ahmed, said he was approached several times during the last two years by brokers who promised him passage west for as much as $5,000. He recalled a specific meeting in a Nairobi cafe where "that person told me: `Pay $3,000 and I'll arrange your case. If you know other people who will pay, we will give you a discount. I will hold your hand into the office.' "
Ahmed said he turned down all offers.
Dahir and two other refugees, another Ethiopian and a Somali, described how the heads of 30 families met last summer in a hotel in downtown Nairobi. Each person, including Dahir representing his family, went with an envelope stuffed with $3,400 for resettlement in the United States.
At the meeting, they said, were two Kenyan United Nations workers, who filled out forms and collected photographs. Also present were two Europeans who did not work for the United Nations, one apparently the owner of the hotel, and a Somali who acted as broker.
But this deal was not completed - because of the investigation, the refugees suspect.
Mr. Tshitungi said he first requested an investigation, after refugees began complaining to him about corruption, in December 1999. That inquiry, run out of United Nations headquarters in Nairobi, ended inconclusively last June, he said.
He said he then requested a second probe, which began in November. That month, Mr. Tshitungi also placed advertisements in The Nation, a Kenyan daily, reminding refugees that the services were free.
Dahir and the other refugees who paid the $3,400 said they had gone back repeatedly to one of the United Nations workers and the Somali broker. At least one of the refugees has been beaten up as a result of the inquiries, they said, adding that they now seem to have lost both their money and the chance to emigrate.