The committee chaired by Jinja East MP Paul Mwiru today waited for the two but they did not show up on different grounds. The former Principal Accountant with the Ministry of Public Service Christopher Obey sent his lawyers Nathan Osinde and Godfrey Himbaza of   Ohsh law firm who told MPs that their client was unable to be before the committee because he was upcountry and requested for him to be allowed to appear Tuesday next week.

The committee learnt the former permanent secretary Jimmy Rwamafa is sick and could not appear.

The committee tomorrow expects witnesses from the Judiciary and the Attorney General Chambers on reports that Hul and partners, which is a law firm, forged a court order to procure payment worth 15.4 billion shillings for payment of ghost pensioners.

The post Pension scam probe hits snag first appeared on Uganda Multimedia News & Information.

Lwabi who was supposed to have appeared today was represented by the administrator general who said that the solicitor general could not make it because she had travelled to London to attend Heritage oil company case against Uganda.

The MPS on the committee chaired by Terego MP Kassiano Wadri said that the solicitor general should have sent some of the lawyers to London to attend to the case in order for her to appear since she knew in advance that she was supposed to be in the committee to answer auditor general’s report.

The mps who included the mp for Bufumbira East Eddie Kwizera   Kassiano Wadri, Mbarara woman mp Emma Boona noted that the solicitor General will be out of office for 17 days yet she did not leave in the office someone to effectively represent her in the committee.

The mps ordered the solicitor General who is now in London where she will be for 7 days  and later she in Washington for 10 days  to cut on the days she is supposed to be away and come back to appear before the public accounts committee and present the office accountability. They instructed the administrator general who represented the solicitor general to immediately contact Lwabi and call her back.

By Isaac Senabulya

The post MPs summon solicitor general Harriet Lwabi from London first appeared on Uganda Multimedia News & Information.

DPP Director Richard Butera

The DPP’s office has always been blamed for failure to prosecute people that are corrupt yet Parliament’s oversight committees like PAC always come with up reports which implicate some people for corruption and which the office of DPP can use to win cases of corruption against them in court but it is said that the DPP’s office never bothers to follow up some of these cases.

While speaking at Parliament the Chairperson of the committee, Nandala Mafabi has said that the committee did investigations on the Global Fund Scandal and it also recently carried out an investigation into the mismanagement of funds by some officials that were meant for the organization of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting but  few people have been prosecuted for being involved in such mismanagement of funds by government officials.

Mafabi says if Parliament carries out investigations on corruption scandals and the DPP frustrates the efforts of Parliament, then the office of the DPP will be doing the disservice to this country.

The Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Amos Ngolobi however says that it is not true that the DPP frustrates Parliaments efforts in the fight against corruption because sometimes it is circumstances beyond the control of the DPP’s office that make them fail to prosecute some of those corruption cases.

Ngolobi says for instance the institution is highly underfunded and this curtails their effectiveness in managing cases and is partly the reason why his office has not handled some of these cases on corruption.

He says besides his office has to gather enough evidence before it can prosecute anyone in court since it does not solely depend on the reports of parliament on corruption to prosecute suspects.

The fight against corruption has been criticized on the ground that it only manages to net the people that misappropriate little cash whereas those that are at the helm of mismanaging huge amounts of cash are left to go scot free thus the adage of the net that catches small fish but lets the big fish go through.

By Tiberindwa Zakaria, Ultimate Medaia

The post Parliament pins Directorate of Public Prosecutions for frustrating fight against corruption first appeared on Uganda Multimedia News & Information.