When a shipment of substandard fuel arrived in Kenya aboard the MT Paloma and was subsequently ordered off the market, it left behind something harder to remove than oil: Sh5.1 billion in taxes already collected by the Kenya Revenue Authority. The cargo, imported by One Petroleum under emergency tender provisions and discharged into Kenya Pipeline Company storage in late March, failed both local quality standards and the government-to-government procurement framework that governs such imports. What remains is a question as old as bureaucracy itself — when the transaction is undone, what become