After enduring months of Mirundi criticisms that her new anti-corruption unit would be manipulated by the mafia not to achieve much, President Museveni’s anti-corruption Tsar Col Edith Nakalema has started biting making the so-called big fish victims. Yesterday her team, acting on a tip off, harvested two notorious URA officials whose bribe-taking antics have been legendary and well-known. The two ill-fated officials are Ferdinand Wamala and Hassan Miiro who were nabbed immediately after negotiating and receiving a bribe of Shs50m from a businessman called Jomo Ikata Okumu. Ikata’s outstanding tax obligation stood at more than Shs3.78bn but Wamala and Miiro had promised to work with others still at large inside the URA headquarters in Nakawa to reduce it to zero so that the businessman overcomes the tax burden without paying anything to national coffers. Ikata is based in Kakira Township in Jinja where he is a sugar cane out grower and the local ruling NRM Chairman. The Shs3.78bn tax obligation figure was reached after months of careful assessment by URA but the two men had assured him all would be well once their Shs50m was released and shared among concerned officials. The Nakalema operatives picked the duo like grasshoppers from Nile Anchor Parish in Jinja as they got down to counting and sharing the Shs45m advance that Ikata had released to them. One of them wept as if he was demon-possessed in the hope that would cause the operatives to act more leniently but his antics never worked as they determinedly carried him away nevertheless. Nakalema had previously cracked the whip on fraudsters running the Ministry of Lands zonal offices in Wakiso where efficiency in service delivery has since improved a great deal. She has also been to Bunyoro where she equally harvested crooks who had been acting corruptly and in the process the good name of the NRM party.
