Kenya’s fight against corruption just took a sharp turn after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) completed a high-level corruption diagnostic assessment on President William Ruto’s administration.
The IMF’s probe, conducted by its Technical Assistance team, targeted Kenya’s most sensitive institutions. Over two weeks, the team dug into tax policy, mining, market regulation, and public financial management.
Their aim? To uncover the corruption networks silently draining public resources. A full report will be released later this year, but the initial findings already paint a worrying picture.
IMF Probes Unmask Corruption in Ruto’s Government
The IMF has concluded a detailed governance diagnostic assessment that lays bare the systemic corruption within President Ruto’s government. This effort, led by IMF’s Chief of Fiscal Affairs Rebecca Sparkman, ran from June 16 to June 30, 2025, following a scoping mission held in March.
The probe involved face-to-face discussions with a wide range of stakeholders — from top officials in the National Treasury to civil society groups and private sector players. The team investigated how much public revenue is lost through bribery, theft, and abuse of office. They also sought to understand why Kenya’s anti-graft laws are failing to stop the rot.
The IMF’s evaluation specifically focused on:
- Public financial management systems
- Tax collection and policy enforcement
- Revenue administration in key sectors like mining and market regulation
- Judiciary and legal institutions
- Central Bank and financial sector governance
- Anti-Money Laundering frameworks
Every one of these sectors is crucial to Kenya’s economy — and each showed worrying signs of weak governance and deep-seated corruption.
While no names have been released yet, IMF officials confirmed the presence of “critical graft vulnerabilities” and called for urgent reforms. The team acknowledged that while Ruto’s administration invited the assessment voluntarily in 2023, the actual level of cooperation during the mission was mixed, with some ministries accused of blocking access to financial records.
Signs of Collapse from Within
Corruption in Ruto’s government is not just a moral issue — it’s an economic threat. Kenya is drowning in debt, with repayments taking a massive chunk of public revenue. Citizens are being taxed more while basic services like healthcare, education, and food security continue to suffer.
The IMF team found that massive revenue losses could be linked to poor oversight and deliberate loopholes that benefit politically connected elites. For example, procurement fraud, fake project tenders, and unaccounted-for budget allocations were flagged as recurring issues in nearly every sector they assessed.
Even the judiciary, expected to help fight corruption, came under fire. Insiders told the IMF that bribes and political interference often determine how corruption cases are handled. Several cases involving high-profile individuals close to the current administration have either stalled or disappeared from court altogether.
Ruto’s team has often blamed past regimes for Kenya’s woes, but the IMF’s findings show the current leadership has failed to clean house. Instead, old networks of graft seem to have adapted and embedded themselves more deeply.
What Comes Next After the IMF Bombshell
The IMF stated that a draft report is being finalized and will be shared before the end of 2025. It will include a sequenced reform plan tailored to Kenya’s current vulnerabilities. But for many Kenyans, hope is fading fast. Even with international pressure, the government has failed to hold its own officials accountable.
Kenya’s civil society and opposition leaders are now calling for the full report to be made public immediately. They argue that secrecy around the IMF’s findings only protects those stealing from the public.
“The fact that the IMF had to come in to diagnose what Kenyans already live through daily is both a shame and a call to action,” said a governance expert based in Nairobi. “We are taxed to the bone, but all that money vanishes into the hands of a few connected people.”
Despite these revelations, the government has not issued a clear response. State House has instead released vague statements praising the “spirit of cooperation” with international partners, avoiding any mention of the corruption findings.
The big question now is whether Ruto’s administration will act on the report’s recommendations — or ignore them like past regimes have done. With the IMF’s full report on the horizon, the pressure is on. But if history is anything to go by, Kenyan citizens may have to keep fighting this battle themselves, with or without international help.
