[JURIST] Lawyers in Kenya are now ranked as the ninth most corrupt group in the country, according to the Kenya Bribery Index 2007, a report released Tuesday by Transparency International (TI) [advocacy website]. The annual Kenya Bribery Index [TI materials] has never in its previous five years of publication listed lawyers as top solicitors of bribes in Kenya. For the sixth year in a row, the police were listed as the top corrupt political branch in the 2007 study. The judiciary, which was ranked sixth in the Kenya Bribery Index 2006 [PDF text], moved out of the top ten this year. AP has more.

The Kenyan government has been at the forefront of corruption claims in recent years, especially after Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki [official profile] promised to clean up widespread government corruption after being elected to office in 2002. Last year, Kenya charged [JURIST report] four former senior Kenyan government officials and a top businessman with corruption for their roles in a $1 billion scam known as the Goldenberg affair [BBC report; Wikipedia backgrounder]. The charges came one month after Kibaki's education and energy ministers both resigned [JURIST report] after being implicated, but not charged, in the Goldenberg case while serving in the previous regime.