By Our Reporters
Closely working with the Israel intelligence services, Uganda Interpol Director Dr. Fred Yiiga is investigating circumstances under which four Ugandan pilgrims went missing in the holy land 2 months ago. And at the center of this investigation is a city business lady called Paula Nahamya, the proprietor of Africa One Tours & Travel which blew the whistle on what turned out to be a human trafficking racket.
THE GENESIS:
It all started late November 2017 when a one Johnson Magara turned up at Buziga Katuso-based Africa One offices. He offered to be a commission agent that would get 20 clients that wished to be pilgrims visiting Israel for a pilgrimage which Africa One annually organizes around December in conjunction with Church of Uganda whose team leader this time round was the ex-Parliamentary Anglican Chaplain Rev Dr. Medard Birungi. The use of commission agents is common practice as part of marketing and boosting one’s sales. “We always take people strictly identified through Church of Uganda but this time round we said okay let’s take these additional 20 since they say they are from Kiwamirembe Prayer Center which is also a Church,” Paula Nahamya explained to Mulengera news website in an interview. “We use Church of Uganda to ensure integrity of what we do because we don’t want to be taken advantage of by people seeking to travel for improper intentions. Some hide under pilgrimage just to obtain visas and run away.” Africa One has traded in this for more than 6 years. What normally happens is that potential pilgrims wishing to sign up and travel as a group, one person (in this case Magara) signs the engagement contract on behalf of the rest. That makes him the contact person through whom Africa One obtains all the relevant paper work and prepare for the trip. And you need to be a minimum of 7 people to travel as a group. “We agreed that since they are many and it’s for the December trip, we shall give a discount from $2,900 we normally charge for those going to Israel to $2,500. That is why we allowed them to even pay in installments because it was good business being many guys in the group.” Nahamya says they started paying in installments that were sometimes painfully as low as $100 deposit. Each intending pilgrim is required to produce paper work and a file is opened in his or her name. This paper work comprises of things like valid IDs, passports and a recommendation letter from your employer guaranteeing that you won’t disappear but will return after the pilgrimage. One’s bankers also write in authenticating that so and so is our customer and has so much money on the account. All these are part of the visa requirements which Nahamya’s company had to work out in liaison with their tour and travel partner in Israel and the authorities at the Egyptian border.
THINGS FALL APART:
As the visa processing exercise proceeded, an alert was raised by the Israel intelligence and minister of the interior. This was barely two weeks to the travel date and it came through Nahamya’s business partner in Israel. The Africa One management dully informed the Interpol whose Director Fred Yiiga got so devastated and assigned an officer whose investigations established that indeed the guys had supplied fake papers pretending them to be employer recommendations. Some of them had even fake IDs and it wasn’t the first time they were doing this. The alert as seen by this news website was written in Hebrews with an English translation attached. The Israel authorities were rebuking Africa One management for not doing enough due diligence because the 20 guys Magara was fronting to travel were a security threat and had improper motives. Their visas had been cancelled and the Israel authorities were threatening to cancel visas for the other 31 pilgrims that were coming under the Church of Uganda arrangement led by Rev Medard Birungi. The Israel intelligence had established that these 20 guys hadn’t only had visas written in their names basing on forged documents, some of them had previously been caught trying to illegally sneak into certain Middle Eastern countries. Only 4 of the 20 were able to eventually make last minute efforts to put their paper work in order. They included a couple (Mr. Matte and his wife an employee of Vine Pharmacy) and some two other youths. “I was actually away in America having taken another group but my team at the office reluctantly put these four on the team to become a total of 35 pilgrims. Guess what happens on arrival in Israel? The four guys disappeared proving the alert the Israel intelligence had initially raised. They went missing and disorganized the rest of the group. It was bad for my company’s name and image because the Church of Uganda people shouldn’t have been inconvenienced. It was a scandal for sure and there was chaos in the company. We had to be subjected to a penalty of $15,000 of which Africa One had to pay $7,000 and our Israeli paid the balance. If we didn’t pay this $15,000 fine, the other 31 pilgrims were going to be deported and would never travel to Israel again,” Nahamya says looking very broken at how things have instead been twisted to appear as if Africa One did anything wrong. Ironically the two youths (of the 4 people who went missing) were recommended by someone who Africa One management took to be a prominent member of All Saints Church Nakasero.
NEARLY LOST BIZ:
Nahamya says the very traumatic unprecedented experience greatly unsettled her to the extent that the Israel partner tour & travel agency wanted to cancel its business relationship with Africa One “but they didn’t because nothing of the sort had ever happened in the many years of our business relationship.” Though she has no proof as yet, Nahamya says she can’t rule out the possibility of one of Africa One competitors working with the 20 troublesome pilgrims to mess up her company’s well built reputation. There are many firms doing the same business but Africa One has always taken the Lion’s share of the jobs especially with Embassies. The company, that initially had offices at Security House Jinja Road, has strong business relationships with French and American embassies with whom they worked for instance to take more than 60 people to the US late last year for their kids’ participation in a Disney World event. American visa is one of the hardest to get and, whereas Africa One NBS TV adverts clearly stated the limited number wanted, over 200 applied and the company had to sufficiently scrutinize until when the number dropped to 60. It was a moment to be tested because some parents, of course with improper motives, offered as much as $20,000 in bribes to have their children on the list the much trusted Africa One was sending to the embassy for visa issuance. “We resisted all those juicy offers and we couldn’t resist if we were shady as this media story has portrayed us,” Nahamya explains. Whereas it was a sacrifice turning a blind eye on such colossal sums of money, the restraint did wonders as it increased the American embassy’s trust in Africa One, something that will translate into more business deals in future. This is something envious competitors, including one who had alerted the Israel authorities before the 20 sham pilgrims had even established contact with Africa One, would like to work against. Nahamya, who the Sunday newspaper article painted as fraudulent, considers that Magara the commission agent was innocent. Like any other commission agent, he was excited at the prospect of getting 20 potential pilgrims “and it appears they took advantage of him well knowing he is one of the few people who could lead them to Africa One.” Nahamya says these same 20 guys have been duping other tour agencies and they are always on the move targeting new ones whose managers may not be aware of their shady history and improper motives of always trying to pretend to be pilgrims when in actual sense they only want to land a visa and then disappear on arrival in Israel.
VICTIMS REPORT TO POLICE:
Some of the guys in the 20 potential clients Magara innocently brought have since protested by reporting Nahamya’s Africa One to Police CIID headquarters in Kibuli whose publicist Vincent Sekate confirms a GEF has been opened. They are demanding a refund of the money they had deposited. “Yes we accept some had paid some money but once your visa is cancelled, there is no way I can take you to Israel. Some had paid as little as $100 and others as much as $2,000 and more but we can’t refund the money because the moment you commit, we begin preparations including hotel bookings and we put in money that is never refunded to us the moment visas are cancelled or a client is unable to travel for some other reason. This is something we have been explaining to them,” Nahamya explained during the Mulengera news interview. In their complaint to CIID Kibuli, where Nahamya has been summoned to appear, the blocked clients also refer to a one Godfrey Mbabazi who impersonated Nahamya falsely claiming to be an employee of Africa One. “We don’t know him at all. He is not our employee. He has been an impostor purporting to be our representative whereas not. We in fact reported to police and got him arrested along with Johnson Magara,” Nahamya says of Mbabazi a lecturer at the International University of East Africa in Kansanga. The complainants in the Kibuli matter claim that Godfrey Mbabazi approached them and received money (in dollars) purporting to represent the company. One victim who was travelling with her family claims that Mbabazi asked for $10,000 to get her a visa. Nahamya says the Sunday Vision hit her with a negative story yesterday because one of Godfrey Mbabazi’s brothers is a senior manager there and was desperate to use the newspaper “to revenge on us because we caused the arrest of his brother.” She is threatening to sue Uganda’s leading daily for what she terms a defamatory Sunday article they wrote about her and her company portraying them as fraudsters yet in actual sense they are victims of a highly sophisticated human trafficking racket. “This is really strange the type of country we are in. We reported to Interpol two months ago and we wonder what they have been doing with these people for all this time. We gave them everything and it’s them who must tell the country what happened,” ranted Nahamya as she expressed readiness to honor CIID Kibuli summons to tell her side of the story.
THE 20 GUYS:
The guys now complaining against Africa One include Lawrence Luboyera ($1000), Dolerence Nakirya ($2500), Maureen Nakalembe ($2500), Mike Kiganda ($2500), Juliana Lunkuse ($1000), Fred Kamyuka ($1500), Raymond Mugalasi ($1500) and Lydia Namusoke ($1000). They say they learnt of the prospect of being taken to Israel through Africa One on NBS TV which airs regular adverts promoting upcoming pilgrimages for the company. To comment on this and other Mulengera news stories, reach us on 0703164755/mulengeranews@gmail.com
