“Can you imagine? We pay taxes, I can barely afford flour, and now this?” said Boniface Wanyama Wekesa, a security guard, looking at a front-page article on Wednesday about the $85 pens. “If you’re going to steal,” he said, echoing the famous words of Mobutu Sese Seko, the former dictator of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), “please, just steal a little.”

Image "This is the biggest bunch of crooks to ever run a government in this part of Africa," said John Githongo, one of Kenya’s leading anticorruption activists. Credit... Simon Maina/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The implicated officials have denied any wrongdoing. Manoah Esipisu, a government spokesman, said in a text that “allegations are being investigated.”

“In Kenya,” he wrote, “we believe in our institutions. Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission; director of public prosecutions, judiciary, etc.”

Kenya is a vital Western ally, home to a large Western intelligence community and several Western military bases, overt and covert. It is seen as a reliable bulwark in the battle against the Islamist extremism that troubles neighbors like Somalia. The United States has a tricky line to walk here, because while it needs the Kenyan government’s cooperation for counterterrorism operations, it does not want to be silent on runaway graft.

In July, President Obama spoke strongly about corruption during a visit to Kenya, saying it “holds back every aspect of economic and civil life.”

The United States announced a joint anticorruption commitment with Kenya and recently pledged more than $1 million to set up a specialized Kenyan investigative unit to uncover public corruption connected to transnational crime. The American ambassador to Kenya, Robert F. Godec, said Wednesday, “The United States is deeply concerned by recent allegations of corruption and the misuse of public funds.”

But the West seems to be banging its head against a wall. Activists say that Kenya’s corruption is only getting worse and that the West needs to say less and do more, like denying visas to any Kenyan official accused of stealing public money. Kenya, after all, is still a poor country where many people don’t have clean water to drink or access to electricity. It is not a stretch to say that many lives are made much harder — or even lost — because of all the stolen money.