A select committee of parliament has ordered Interpol to investigate the operations of GEMTEL, a telecommunications company operating in Southern Sudan.
The order is in response to concerns about the shady deal between Gemtel and Uganda telecoms.
The UTL-Gemtel deal sparked off controversy after UTL allowed the Sudanese company to use Uganda's international dialing code, +256, to enable its customers make international calls. This was intended to give Gemtel more time to sort out access to Sudan's international gateway with the government in Khartoum.
Reports however indicate that Gemtel's chairman, Augustus Caesar Mulenga, is paying UTL 50,000 dollars per month for the dialing code.
Early this year, parliament demanded an investigation into the terms of the deal following reports that the deal was struck with full backing of government of Uganda and the Government of Southern Sudan.
Appearing before the select committee of parliament, the works, transport and communications minister, John Nasasira, denied knowledge about the UTL-Gemtel deal.
The minister also reported that government has never reported the arrangement to the International Telecommunications, Union because it is temporary in nature.
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John Odit, the committee chairman, demanded to know why calls to the network from other networks, such as MTN, are international calls and billed as such.
