By Joshua Walakira & Simon Turibamwe
Acting on intel provided by frustrated whistle blowers, President Museveni recently learnt of grand corruption at Uganda Law Reform Commission (ULRC) and swiftly acted leaving many culprits’ egos bruised. Those licking wounds of Museveni’s lethal knife are 9 top officials including the CEO Lucas Omara Abong and Commissioners. As we write, those running the Commission are serving in acting capacities following Museveni’s decision to direct ULRC supervising Minister William Byaruhanga to obliterate all those his clandestine investigations exposed in corruption practices. Situated on Workers House, ULRC is mandated to regularly revise laws of Uganda making them appropriate for the rapidly changing times. They then produce law volumes which ironically is something they have not outputted for the last 19 years. The last time such output was made was in the year 2000 and what irked Museveni most was the fact that GoU annually allocates ULRC billions of shillings to facilitate that activity. Museveni couldn’t believe that, whereas the ULRC core mandate is doing legal work, the now fired Lucas Omara top management has for all these years been corruptly expending money on support activities deliberately leaving departments meant to do the core work (of research leading to law reform) unfunded. There are also billions in donor funding (under JLOS etc) that continue to be squandered under the guise of organizing ghost workshops and nonexistent field activities. On getting the information, Museveni called in his new anti-corruption Tsar Edith Nakalema who corroborated what whistle blowers had reported to him. Thereafter, Museveni rang William Byaruhanga prompting him to act since to ULRC falls under the Justice Ministry. Byaruhanga, who rejected all manner of sweeteners and gratifications from the eventually fired managers who are known to be stinking rich because of the billions they have annually been accessing, then liaised with ULRC Chairperson the incorruptible Vastina Rukimirana to do the needful. The interdicted officials tried to reach out to Nakalema daggling all manner of offers but the girl from Kashari proved too uncooperative. She threatened to violently arrest them if they didn’t stop sending their curious emissaries. They offered to cooperate by exposing other corrupt accomplices at ULRC in return for pardon but Nakalema wasn’t interested. They resorted to threatening legal action challenging their interdiction in Court but concerned government officials didn’t bulge. Museveni already had too much information on their culpability. The interdiction letters came and the unwanted officials were asked to immediately hand over at a time they had started witch-hunting those they suspected of reporting them to the President.
IGG ROLE
On realizing the extend of fraud was too vast and complicated, Museveni demanded that the offices of the IGG and Auditor General John Muwanga also get involved as the Nakalema unit hasn’t developed adequate capacity to inquire into such complex corruption.
THE FIRED BOSSES
The officers AG William Byaruhanga and ULRC Chairman Vastina Rukimirana fired on the prompting of the president include elderly Lucas Omara Abong (CEO), Esther Majambere (Commissioner Law Revision), Francis Katoko (Officer in charge of Revised Laws’ Printing project), David Obol Otori (Head F&A), Sunday Agenonga (Procurement Officer), Richard Kamure (Office Supervisor), Lucas Omara Abong (CEO/Accounting Officer), (Commissioner Law Reform), George Atwijukire (Senior Accountant) and James Musaazi (Senior Economist). Three of these (David Obol, Kamure and Agenonga) were troubled by the imprudent procurement decisions which resulted into a multi-billion printing framework contract being awarded to Intersoft Business Services Ltd whose directors and owners are guys who had previously worked at ULRC in top finance positions. Museveni found it outrageous that the very unpatriotic contracting decisions entitled the little known company to be paid Shs717,738 for every page they printed for ULRC. According to CEO Lucas Omara Abong, the troubling contract was awarded in August 2018. What angered State House even more was that the way the contract was awarded ignored President Museveni’s relentless efforts to revive the Irene Muwanguzi-led Uganda Printing and Publishing Corporation (UPPC) based in Entebbe. Museveni has previously been very outspoken insisting all government printing jobs should go to UPPC because of its experience and capability to keep GoU secrets without breaching security requirements. The other reason is that such ring-fencing makes UPPC profitable and thereby meeting the expectations of German investors Museveni personally lured to invest and recapitalize UPPC. Unknown to ULRC bosses, things concerning UPPC are very dear to Museveni and its unlikely he can forgive anybody making decisions depriving it of business deals. Reasons given by ULRC for sidelining UPPC were even more intriguing to the President. According to interdicted CEO Lucas Omara, UPPC was rejected because it lacked trading license, tax clearance certificate, audited accounts and UNBS certificates. Omara also says UPPC, which has existed since independence, lacks experience to print ULRC materials which it actually has handled before. Other companies that were rejected included Dataline Graphics Ltd, Inline Print Services Ltd, Graphics Systems Ltd, Manifesto Publications Ltd and Uganda Business Advantage Services Ltd. Also being investigated is the role of former ULRC auditor David Katende in this controversial procurement.
M7 BITTER
As the audit investigations went on, Museveni angrily discovered that much progress was unlikely to be made because of the glaring conflict of interest in the way the special audit team was constituted. Last month, Dr. Chris Makanga who is a Senior Principal Auditor at the OAG wrote to ULRC Ag CEO/Secretary/Accounting Officer Bernadette Nalule introducing the special investigations team and asking for the relevant documents including those relating to HR, finance and procurement decisions. On learning of the special investigations team, Museveni directed intelligence services to verify their impartiality to be able to do a good job. The intelligence services returned with a report indicating Dr. Makanga’s unsuitability for the task at hand. It was indicated that for all the years the dubious procurement, HR and financial decisions occurred he was the ULRC external auditor and always rated their now disputed accountability as satisfactory. State House, that is keenly following developments at ULRC, is now doubtful Makanga can produce a report that will expose his own past ineptness of failing to expose the ULRC fraud over which Museveni recently directed interdiction of implicated officials though latest info shows there is still lots of Kawukumi (evil-minded officials) at ULRC. Dr. Makanga’s team comprises of himself, Victoria Achom and Dorcus Ajwang who intelligence reports say can’t be adequately impartial since the fraudulent practices at ULRC would have been exposed long time ago if the trio had been doing their job properly. It’s unlikely the trio can produce a report exposing their own incompetence. State House is also furious that, just like in the MTN case, the interdicted officials have continued to informally call shots and running the show at ULRC (accessing relevant documents) through their proxies. On Museveni’s prompting, intelligence agencies are examining claims that Leonard Baguma (accountant), Issa Mayinja (auditor) and Moses Apopel are aiding attempts by fired officials to criminally interfere with Mzee’s ongoing investigations into fraudulent practices at ULRC. It’s also suspected that some of the fired officials are using the unofficially accessed documents to forge and falsify accountabilities on especially donor-funded projects in order to neutralize the ongoing clandestine investigations by State House. Over this anomaly, Museveni is understood to be pondering causing interdiction of more officials. Whereas it superficially appears to be a terribly underfunded organization, ULRC has lots of donor projects whose annual budget ranges from Shs200m-Shs500m. Whereas there is a lot of abuse on donor funds, sources close to intelligence investigations (parallel to Dr. Makanga’s) say there has over the years been worse abuse regarding GoU funds because a clique of thieving officials would prevent the rest of the employees from knowing how much has been allocated and released to ULRC per quarter. Because it’s one of the small votes, even Parliament hasn’t been paying much attention to what the OAG says about ULRC. All this has enabled the thieving clique members to embezzle and misappropriate billions and get away with it. More later. For comments, call, text or whatsapp us on 0703164755.
