The Game of Mathematics: Just How Much Does a US Dollar Bill Weigh?

Few Kenyans know the weight of bank notes for the simple reason that what they earn is always light in their wallets. So when they read that one of the Ocampo Six men had lost a brief case containing Shs840 million in US dollar bills, interest was aroused. And it didn’t centre on the quantity of money. It centered on who the money-bag was.

Since there were only three suspects returning from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the brief mention of the cases in which they are facing charges of crimes against humanity, then only one of them was the money bag. One obviously wasn’t. That left only two – Eldoret North MP and suspended Higher Education Minister, Mr. William Ruto and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Mr. Uhuru Kenyatta.

Mr. Kenyatta ended the suspense and speculations when he issued a statement saying his brief case, the loss of which he had reported to the police, had no money in it. But the statement added a new dimension which only those who deal with big money, like Treasury where Mr. Kenyatta works, would know.

“The money (US$10m) in 100 dollar notes weighs 100 kg, is 4 cubic feet yet the bag was a small computer bag. This just confirms how ludicrous the report is. Carrying that amount of cash is in contravention of many laws and constitutes a serious crime, the most serious being money laundering, which legislation Mr. Kenyatta was instrumental in having passed,” Mr. Kenyatta said in a statement.

“It’s an atrocious falsehood and part of the current conspiracy to discredit Mr. Kenyatta. The description, the blogs (which specifically mention his name) plus the fact that only he reported a lost bag make it very clear that the accusations are specifically against him,” the statement sent to newsrooms by Mr. Kenyatta’s director of communications Mr. Munyori Buku, added.

The American Embassy, it was reported, had said a US dollar bill weighs 1 gram.

Ocampo Knows Maths, Too

While that was going on, the ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo was at it, asking Kenyans to freshen up their mathematical skills again. Just how long does it take to read 12,900 pages?

The issue is that Ocampo is supposed to “give all the evidence” he has against the Ocampo Six – the six Kenyans he has accused of sponsoring chaos in which at least 1,300 people were killed in the 2008 post-election tribal clashes. The evidence will be used by the Ocampo Six lawyers to prepare the defense for their clients.

But Ocampo has appealed against the court’s orders, supposed to fulfilled by April 18, 2011, mainly because the Kenya government is challenging the ICC powers to hear the case. Should the Kenya government win, Mr. Ocampo argues, he will have exposed his huge retinue of witnesses to great risk. And even if the Kenya government loses, he further argues, such an exposure will necessitate enormous energy to protect the exposed witnesses. This, Mr. Ocampo goes on, will weaken his case because he will be not have time to concentrate on his presentations. His attention will be distracted by the security needs of his witnesses.

To impress on the judges the gargantuan task that’s involved in the fulfillment of the court’s orders, Mr. Ocampo says he needs 421 days to sift through the 12,900 pages of reports on the case that he has gathered. Calculate that in months and see how long that is.