Assessors of the Anti-corruption court have today advised the Judge to acquit David Chandi Jamwa, the former NSSF Boss
Jamwa is charged with abuse of office and causing a financial loss to the workers body to the tune of 3 billion shillings through arbitrary actions in disregard of NSSF interests.
The state led by Sydney Asubo intend to prove that when Jamwa was appointed Managing Director of NSSF he stopped calling Management investment committee meetings of which he was the chair. He allegedly started making all investment decisions in breach of the set procedures.
One such decision was to sell off several government bonds led by NSSF between September and November 2007 before their maturity dates to Crane Bank.
However, the assessors Silver Kakumba and Agnes Mugala today said that in the case of abuse of office, Jamwa acted within the Funds fiver year strategic plan which approved the sale of some of the government bonds.
The strategic plan that was agreed upon at a meeting held at Paraa Safari Lodge in Northern Uganda proposed efforts to minimize the losses made by the fund and maximize its profit to the benefit of its members.
The assessors said that the orders to sell the bonds came from the Ministry of Finance under Dr. Ezra Suruma's leadership and the former investment analyst William Kizito.
On the charge of causing financial loss to the fund, the assessor's said the money accrued from the deal was deposited in various accounts earning high interest rates. Adding that if the bonds had not been sold off, they would have negatively affected the NSSF budget.
They said that instead the same period saw an increment of money invested in fixed income assets. This included an investment of 30% in real estate, 20% in local shares and 50% in Government bonds.
In his testimony last year, Jamwa told court that that although some of the bonds were sold to Barclays Bank, Centenary Bank, City Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, the overall sale to Crane Bank as a local company was to protect the credibility of the NSSF since the sale to Foreign Banks would have been detrimental to the deal.
The Judge John Bosco Katusti has set 25th February as the day for delivering his ruling.
